Two Tracks, Two Strong Runs to Begin 2012 Season
It was a busy first weekend at the track for David Elliott and the Pennzoil Racing Team.
Friday night saw the team at Delaware Speedway for “Preseason Thunder” – a night of non-points races. The Pennzoil Chevrolet was quick all night and David used the evening to get use to the new lane through turns 3 and 4. After finishing 6th in a 10 lap heat race, David started 2nd for the 20 lap feature. The car was fast and David finish 3rd place…the highest finishing car running according to Delaware’s rulebook.
“Considering there were 23 cars here tonight and the two who finished in front of us were running on 10” tires, we will consider this a success and hope it is a sign of things to come for the rest of the season,” said David.
The team spent a good part of Saturday switching the car over so it could run at Sunset Speedway on Sunday in the first of the four-race McColl Pro Late Model Series.
The #37 had a bit of a push on old tires during practice, but ran fast laps when it practiced on new tires. The team decided to save the rubber for the race and ran the old tires for the first heat. David started on the outside of the front row and quickly realized that the old tires were a bad decision. The car had a terrible push and fell to the back of the 10-car field immediately. For the second heat, the team bolted back on the new tires and the car ran “100% better” according to David and despite starting on the back row, David climbed to 6th by the end of the heat.
For the feature, the Pennzoil Chevy lined up in 17th position. The plan was to be patient, save the tires, avoid trouble and race hard for the final 25 laps.
David slowly began moving through the field as soon as the race started, but complained that the car was a too loose and he had lost the clutch. After being hit from behind and spun on an early-race restart, David chose to pit to make an adjustment to tighten up the car. Despite having to fall to the tail end of the field, the improvement in handling allowed David to begin carving his way toward the top-10 by mid-race.
Thanks to avoiding a few wrecks and patiently picking his spots to pass cars, David had moved the #37 into 5th place with just 15 laps to go. David radioed in to the crew that there was a loud rattling coming from the front-end of the car and hoped that it was just a broken header. There were several restarts during the final few laps and David had a heated (but clean) battle with the #18 of Jesse Kennedy. Kennedy prevailed on the final restart, but David held on to 6th place.
“We had a 10th place car and managed a 6th place finish,” said David. “After all we went through tonight, we’re happy with where we ended up.”
The team will be at Delaware Speedway this Friday night for the first points night of the season. Hope to see you there.
