Race Recap: 7/22 - Hickory Motor Speedway

During the week leading up this Saturday’s race we made quite a few changes to the #30 machine, so everyone on the team was anxious to see how it performed in morning practice. Right off the trailer the car felt good. We continued to tune and work and it got even better in response to our adjustments.

Our lap times were showing good pace, but unfortunately it seemed as though the entire field brought good pace this week! In Practice One we came across the line at P5. In Practice Two we were able to improve a bit and came out P3.

Before long it was time to qualify and a driver error on my part in both corners put us back in the field at P6 for the starting grid of the race. Definitely not where we wanted to be and completely surrounded by potential pile-ups.

At the green flag the car felt really good. Early on during lap two though, the 47 car drifted up in turn 2 and forced us to back out or pancake the wall. This caused us to fall about 10 car lengths and I immediately got back to work chasing down the front.

I eventually caught back up with the 47 car, but after running on his inside for nearly 10 laps decided that I didn’t have enough to complete the pass. As we made it up to the 3rd and 4th place cars I was taking yet another shot at the 47 when he got involved with the 66 car off turn 2 and we went 3 wide into the corner. To save it I once again was forced to back out of the engagement.

A caution came out on the track with 10 laps on the board and I restarted in 6th position. I got a great restart but once again ran into trouble with the 47 car squeezing me up high and forcing me to back out putting us in 7th.

Before the race was over we made one more try to get around him but came up just short as the checkered flag flew.

The car came away from the race with some battle scars and the result does not show the great progress we were able to make with the car’s handling.

Thank you for supporting grassroots racing and we will see you at the track!