April 8, 2007
Matthews, NC

Season Starts With Back to Back Top 5 Finishes

Another full field of cars showed up Saturday at the historic Hickory Motor Speedway for the second race of the Allison Legacy Touring Series. All of the teams fought the freezing weather as they prepared for the first practice of the day. Brake problems kept the Butler Motorsports Team from Friday’s open practice at the track so it was important to make every minute of the three ten minute sessions count as they got ready for qualifying. Practice one went well, with Josh showing top ten speeds in the Horizon Technologies/Summitt Communications/Conterra Ultra Broadband #11, but everyone knew that there was still a lot of time to be gained with changes. Hickory is a track that always has a lot of hard accidents due to the high corner speeds and Saturday was no exception. Due to a hard two car crash after one lap in practice # 2 the Legacy Cars didn’t get any track time to check out the changes. The last practice of the day showed good progress for the #11 Monte Carlo and the team got ready for their qualifying run.

The team didn’t have to wait long in qualifying to find out how good they would be, as Josh was the first of 26 cars to take time. Even though the car came off of turn 4 completely sideways, Josh put up one of his best laps of the day and would hold the top spot until the 20th car took the track and knocked him down. Only one more car would beat Josh’s time and he lined up 3rd for the 50 lap main event.

Cold tires and an extremely cold race track made the feature event interesting on each and every lap as the drivers worked hard to keep their cars under them. The top five raced hard throughout the event with Josh running as high as 2nd and as low as 4th, which is where he would finish. The fourth place finish moved Josh up one spot in the point standings to 4th and keeps the momentum going as the team works for their first win in the series, and the ultimate goal of the Touring Series Championship.

Josh on Saturday’s run: “The cold weather and the cold tires really made it hard to get the car comfortable on Saturday, so to come out with a top five finish made it a good day. Blake (Crew Chief Blake Harris) gave me a really good car and I had it up to 2nd at one point, but just couldn’t keep it there. Lapped cars played a big role in the outcome of the finishing order…from when I got blocked in with two laps to go passing for third, to the last corner when the leaders got into lapped traffic and a big crashed happened at the start finish line. Even though we wanted a better finish, the second and fifth place cars came off on a wrecker so I guess we need to count our blessings and move on to Dillon.

We tested the new Dillon Motor Speedway last weekend and were really happy with how things went. We will keep working on the car and I have every confidence in Blake that things will get even better and we will win one of these races soon. We have the big picture in mind with trying to win the championship but I know that I am going to have to get more aggressive and win some of these races to have a shot. Our team is really good and it will happen soon.”

The Butler Motorsports Team will race Dillon Motor Speedway this Saturday in the third 50 lap event of the 22 race schedule. Check back on Monday April 16th for results.