I was excited to get to Greenville-Pickens Speedway. It’s one of my favorite tracks that I have visited since I moved to Charlotte and began travelling with the Whelen Southern Modified Tour. I had been to Greenville-Pickens three times previously, and saw some great races there. Tonight would be no different.
Greenville-Pickens is best described as a old, worn out version of my home track, Stafford Motor Speedway in Connecticut. It’s a flat half mile with long straightaways and only slightly banked corners. We were opening our 2010 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East season at Greenville, so it was rather fitting to have that connection to what I loved back home.
Our driver, Ryan Gifford had a good couple of practices and was 4th quick after the morning session, and 10th fastest in Happy Hour before qualifying. I was slowly gaining confidence that we could have a car capable of winning if qualifying went well.
This was my first race with Ryan and after doing some research online about him and his previous races in the series, I was pretty confident we could be a contender later in the evening.
Ryan qualifined 8th in the Distribution One Chevrolet and was the second fastest of the cars in our team. Darrell Wallace, Jr. whom I worked my initial test with Revolution Racing, just beat us by one spot and would start inside of Ryan in 7th.
So that put us in the high lane for the start. I was a little stressed by that, because Greenville-Pickens is known as a track you need to be on the bottom groove to be able to pass cars that slip up in front of you when the tires get worn out. But Ryan was making the top lane work to his advantage and we were solidly in the top 10 in the early stages of the race.
We were caught up in an early caution and got hit from behind and Ryan spun out and had to restart at the rear. But everyone on the team knew we had a good car and Ryan began carving his way forward. With about 30 laps to go, we were back inside the top 10 and racing for 6th or 7th when another car got under us and drove too deep into the corner and making contact with our car and spinning Ryan a second time.
At this point, I was getting stressed out because I was just not used to having cars I spot for getting run over by drivers who race that way. But Ryan assured me there was nothing I could have done different and during a red flag for a big wreck a few laps later, we cut loose on the radio a little bit and I did some “Waterboy” quotes to help Ryan relax a bit while he was getting a drink inside the car.
Well, it seemed to work because we missed a big wreck on the final lap and snuck back by the car that had wrecked us earlier to finish a strong fifth! We all learned on Tuesday that the second place car had illegal shocks and they disqualified him and moved us up to fourth….So overall, it was a great start to our season.
Darrell Wallace, Jr. ended up winning the race after a hard fought battle with Cole Whitt, who was driving for the Red Bull team, so the mood was good when everyone celebrated our first win in our first points start. That was pretty big, and a special thing to be a part of for Revolution Racing.
This week, we go to a track I have been to several times, South Boston Speedway. The spotter’s stand isn’t in the best of locations, but Ryan had a strong 2nd place finish in the #29 Shell/Pennzoil car at South Boston last year. So, I’m ready to get there and help him get his first win.
