March 18, 2007
Matthews, NC

Season Opener Brings Top Five Run

There were two goals as the Butler Motorsports Team entered the season opening race at Orange County Speedway this weekend…first, continue the progress that the team had at the end of 2006; second, start the season with a top five run. Both goals were met on Saturday as Josh brought the Summitt Communications/Horizon Technologies #11 Monte Carlo home 5th at the 3/8 mile oval.

After a long wait to get in the track (in a light snow) and a long wait in the tech line, the team had to hurry to get out for the first practice. While the car handled well, the practice ended abruptly as an issue with the distributor cap brought Josh into the pits with no power. Practice #2 went exactly the way the team hoped, the car was exactly the way Josh wanted it to be and since he was running fast times (Crew Chief) Blake Harris brought Josh in early to avoid any pre-race issues. Josh was the last of 32 cars to take the track in qualifying and he knew coming off of turn two that the car had turned loose…he put a conservative lap in the books and ended up 6th in the starting grid.

The phrase of the year is going to be “patiently aggressive” and that was discussed a lot before the drop of the green flag. With the goal of running for a championship in mind, everyone knew that there would be times when Josh would be able to press hard and times when he would just have to ride and bide his time. At the start of the race, Josh decided it was time to press…he took 5th on lap one and moved to the high side of the track to work on the 4th and 3rd place cars at the start of lap three. Josh cleared the 4th place car early in lap three and was just about to be called clear into third when the caution flag flew for the first time. Scoring went back to the previous lap and Josh had to drop into line in the fifth position. With the cars all now lined up single file, it was now time for patience…Josh rode on the bumper of the two cars in front of him for much of first half of the race. The car picked up a slight tight condition as the race went on and Josh was forced to continue running his “big picture” race as the laps ran down. He had one more chance to pick up a spot as he got to the inside of the 4th place car with about 10 laps to go…but with the car getting even tighter he was forced to drop back in line and finish the race in the 5th position.

Josh on Saturday’s run: “My car was really fast, I could get back to the gas so much quicker than the guys in front of me…but I was just tight enough that I couldn’t turn down under them. We really wanted to start the year with a top three finish, and I believe we had a fast enough car, but track position was everything today. I was hoping to get those guys early when the car felt great but we had some contact early and I didn’t want to push too hard too fast. All in all it was a really good way to start the season and we were all pretty happy with the way the day turned out.”

The team will test the brand new Dillon Motor Speedway this weekend in preparation for the April 14th race at the track and then will get a weekend off before starting a long season of racing with very few breaks. The next race will be a 50 lap event at Hickory Motor Speedway on April 7th with the Allison Legacy Series.

Josh with Steve Stallings (Horizon Technologies)