July 1, 2006
Rougemont, NC

“Taken Out” of a Top Five Run at Orange County

After a rough ending to the day in Myrtle Beach last weekend, everyone associated with the Horizon Technologies/Conterra Ultra Broadband #11 car was ready for a better weekend at Orange County. Josh likes Orange County a lot, and has run well there, so optimism was high when we arrived for the 75 lap mid season championship. Since most of the car was rebuilt after being hit and crashed at Myrtle Beach, we put our standard set up under the car and hoped for the best in the early practices. Practice #1 showed the team that we were close on the set up and Josh said he needed the car to be freer off the corners to be comfortable. Practice #2 confused us a little as the car, after adjustments to free it up, got tighter on Josh over a very short run. After checking everything over, it was found that a tire issue led to the tight condition and adjustments were made for qualifying. A solid lap during qualifying put Josh 7th in the field of 29 cars that showed up for the race.

After more adjustments by Crew Chief Blake Harris the car was ready for the green flag. After starting 7th Josh moved to sixth on the first lap and was running 5th by lap five. He settled into fifth and decided to ride with the leaders for the first portion of the long race. On lap 20, after several caution periods, Josh got inside the fourth place car going into turn three but quickly had to gather the car from wrecking after the outside car turned down into him exiting turn four. Even though he was much quicker than the car in front of him, Josh showed great patience in fifth place waiting for a mistake to make his move. On a restart at lap 36 Josh got his chance…Josh got a GREAT start and had a run on the leaders going into turn one. When he got under the fourth place car (same car as last time) the driver turned down on Josh hitting him to the track apron, Josh gathered the car up and stayed on the inside through the middle of the corner before the car on the outside turned left coming off of turn two and hit the right front of Josh’s car. The impact sent Josh spinning to the bottom of the track where he was hit by several of the cars back in the pack. The damage was too much for Josh to continue and that ended the night for one of the fastest cars on the track. Frustration was extremely high as we loaded a top five car into the trailer with extensive damage….and an unofficial 23rd place finish.

Josh on Saturday’s race: “That was one of the best cars I have ever driven. It was a little tight off the corners, but I could still get great runs on people and I really feel like we had something for the top two. Unfortunately, one driver had more car than talent and he ended our night on the back of the wrecker. It’s really frustrating because I tried to be as patient as possible and I try to run everyone very clean…I guess that doesn’t pay sometimes. What makes it worse is that the same car wrecked us two weeks in a row. Since we are solidly out of the Rookie of the Year chase now, we are going to take a week off and regroup. We aren’t thinking, or talking, about it much over the long 4th of July weekend…but we’ll get back at it next week.