Before coming to the track, the crew setup the car the same way that it was setup at the April 25th Charlotte County race where Austin finished 3rd. When the team got to the track and practice started, Austin was able to run some fast laps despite running on old tires. Crew Chief Dave Pletcher elected to go with a different shock package which bettered the cars handling. After Austin felt like the car was where it needed to be, Dave decided to take it for a spin. Dave Pletcher is a short track legend in the southeast. He has won a whole lot of races, and has competed on the NASCAR circuit. Dave ran almost identical times as Austin. He felt he could change a few things on the car to match his driving style, but decided not to since he wasn't going to be racing.
Austin went out one time during Saturday practice just to make sure nothing changed. Nothing did, and Austin ran the same lap times that he did the previous day. Austin was feeling pretty good about qualifying since he qualified 2nd at the April 25th race.
Austin was the 3rd one to qualify and timed in at a 15.017 which was a really fast lap. As qualifying wore on, Austin began to feel pretty comfortable that his time would get him his 2nd career pole because nobody was even getting close. But, the last car to qualify bumped Austin off the pole which put him 2nd quickest out of the 27 cars that qualified. Austin would start 5th for the race, though, because of the pill draw.
At the start of the race, the leaders would get together forcing Austin to make a abrupt move to avoid the carnage. He would make it through unscathed and the race would refer back to the original starting line up. The inside lane would back up and Austin would fall back to 6th. Austin waited patiently behind the top 5, because it was evident that they were going to wreck eventually. Austin's assessment was correct, as he had a bird's eye view of the wreck that occurred ahead of him and was able to pick his way through the wreck. The race was caution-plagued, and Austin's car was setup for the long run. If a nice long green flag run would have happened, Austin would have been able to run down the eventual race-winner, but Austin would get pulled on the short runs. Austin would end up with a career-best 2nd place finish. After the race Austin said "I'm happy we got this good finish, but the race wasn't very fun to participate in. There were so many cautions. I think we did learn a bunch, though. I'd like to thank my crew chief Dave Pletcher for working his magic once again. I would also like to thank my crew: Dad, Ronnie, Ryan, and all of my sponsors for making this finish possible. Hopefully we can carry this momentum the ASA South race here in 2 weeks.
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Photos from cgphotos.net
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