2 Nights, 2 Tracks, and 3 Races Makes for a Busy Weekend

 

The David Elliott Racing Team had a busy weekend with two 25-lap races at Delaware on Friday night and a 150-lapper on Saturday night at Sauble Speedway.

 

         

 

The weekend didn’t begin well as the team had to make numerous radical changes to the set up of the #37 Pennzoil Impala during Friday night’s practice sessions. The car went from extremely tight to “out of control loose”. David qualified the car in 16^th position and made one final set of adjustments before the feature races.

 

          

 

“The last set of changes did the trick,” said David. “The car was as good as it’s been since opening night.”

 

The #37 would work well in both the high lane and at the bottom of the track, allowing David to quickly move up from his 16^th starting spot. When the checkered flag flew on the 25^th lap, David had climbed all the way to 8^th position.

 

        

 

After a very quick break, the cars began the second 25-lap feature. David moved up to 7^th shortly after the restart, but then the handling went away and the car began pushing in the corners. David slipped back to eighth and maintained that position for the remainder of the race.

 

The two eighth-place finishes moved David up to eighth place in Delaware points and 202^nd in NASCAR’s Whelen All-American Series – a series which includes drivers from across Canada and the United States .

 

The team headed north on Saturday for a 150-lap race at Sauble Speedway. The Pennzoil Impala was quick right off the trailer and David qualified for the feature in sixth position and moved up to fourth by the first caution.

 

    

 

For the remainder of the first 75-lap segment, David held on to fourth until the second and third place cars of #38 of Kirk Hooker and #52 of Ron Sheridan got together to bring out a caution at lap 74. When the field took the green to start the 2^nd 75-lap segment, David was on the outside pole.

 

On lap 80, David made the pass for the lead and opened up a 4 car-length spread over the second place car. He maintained that gap until a caution came out on lap 113. When the green flag flew again, David knew something had happened to the car.

 

    

 

“It was just like the second race the night before at Delaware ,” explained David. “The car just totally changed during that caution flag. When we went back to green, we had a bad push in the middle of the corner.”

 

    

 

David raced as hard as he could, but slipped back to fifth position by the end of the race.

 

“We think we’ve figured out the problem and will make a few changes to the car before we go back to Delaware in a couple of weeks,” said David.

 

All things considered, one top-5 and two top-10 finishes made for a successful weekend. The team has the July 17^th weekend off and will return to Delaware on July 24^th. See you there!

 

July 25th the car will be on display at Rose-Hill Liquidation in Waterdown

from 11:00 till 4:00    Hope you can make it out!!