On Friday, March 28th, 2008, the 2008 UARA Racing Season kicked of with open practice at Concord Motorsports Park. I was really excited to finally get started on the new year!
Friday went very well for me. The Ultra Pro Synthetic Chevrolet was very fast right out off the truck, and I believed that it was capable to finish in the top-5.
As Saturday came around, rain dominated the morning and early afternoon of the day. Fortunately though, the weather cleared up and the great people at UARA gave the drivers a 1 hour-long practice session before qualifying. Again, the car was very fast and capable of running with most of the series’ veterans.
Qualifying came around and I had to make the top 22 in order to transfer to the 150 lap race. Unfortunately, I drew a bad qualifying position and ended up going out near the front of the group. Track conditions were not ideal to try to get a fast time out of the car, and I ended up 28th out of 43 cars. That meant that I had to run a heat race to transfer to the main event.
As the heat race got underway, I knew that I had to at least hold my position to transfer to the event, but preferably pass a few cars to get a better starting position for the race. It took three tries to finally get the race past the first lap without a wreck, but it finally got started, and I found myself in the third position. I stayed there for the rest of the 25 lap race. I knew that I was faster than the two drivers in front of me, but I knew it was good enough and I wanted to save my equipment for when it counts.
About 20 minutes later, I found myself starting from the 25th position with high hopes to move up into at least the top 10. I was slowly picking through traffic until the caution waved for a major pile-up in turn one. I avoided the wreck by mere inches. For some other drivers though, there cars were not able to continue. At that point, I was in the 15th position. It wouldn’t last, however, when on lap 53, I spun coming off of turn 4 and backed it into the inside wall. I came back into the pits and the crew discovered a problem with the power steering system. The night was over after that.
I truly feel that if I had run all 150 laps, I could have been at least in the top 10, maybe even squeaking into the top 5, but it was not meant to be. The Nick Losito Racing team will try again at Motor Mile Speedway April 11th and 12th to put Concord behind us and work on that first win of the season.
