It wasn’t the start to the season that the David Elliott was looking for, but he and his entire team are excited about the potential the rest of the season holds.

While the #37 Pennzoil Impala felt comfortable and ran quickly in practice a few weeks ago, it seemed to have a totally new attitude as soon as it rolled off the trailer last weekend.

“The brakes weren’t working properly and the car was so loose I couldn’t drive it,” said David.

The car was so bad that the frustrated driver skipped the last set of hot laps for fear of wrecking the car. The car builder, Mike McColl, came over and lent a hand to diagnose the brake problem before the first heat.

Although the brakes were better, the car’s handling was still very unpredictable, but David managed a 4th place heat run!

David started 8th and held a solid top 10 position, on lap 14 there was a caution. This closed the field, but on the restart, the leader brake checked the field, causing a pile up. David and another car were turned,

David had to pit to try and repair some of the damage.

An extended pit stop left David nearly ½ lap behind the field after therace restart, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise when a multi-car wreck happened on the back stretch.

“If we didn’t have the issue on pit road, we would have been right in the middle of that wreck,” said David.

David survived the remainder feature and brought the ill-handling but relatively undamaged car home in 10^th place.

After the race, the team learned that a right front shock had failed and that was the issue causing the car to handle so poorly.

“Last season, we had an old car that didn’t respond to adjustments and we couldn’t get rid of a push all year,” explained David. “Although we had some handling issues this past week, we were able to diagnose the problems and made the appropriate repairs for this coming weekend’s race.”

The team is looking forward to finishing repairs this week and being in contention for the win this coming Friday at Delaware Speedway. They currently sit 8^th in points and are only 15 points out of first place.