October 28, 2006
Myrtle Beach, SC

Great Run Ended on Final Lap

When Josh got his first Allison Legacy Pole back on June 16th, his spot at the top of the leader board was short lived. Saturday afternoon in Myrtle Beach, Josh got his second pole of the season and this time, things were much different. After running the road course race two weeks ago, Blake Harris, Chris Butler and Josh did a lot of work to put the Horizon Technologies/Conterra Ultra Broadband #11 completely back together to be ready for this weekend’s oval race. The car was put back exactly where Blake wanted it to be, and it was set up just slightly tighter than where it was on the last visit to Myrtle Beach. After getting to the track at 8:30am, and a long day of waiting to see if the setup was where it needed to be, the Allison cars finally hit the track at 2:30pm on Saturday afternoon. Josh felt the car out for a couple of laps…and his first lap up to speed was right where he qualified for the June Myrtle Beach event. On the fifth lap of practice, Josh turned the fastest lap of the practice session…a lap that let everyone know that the setup was going to be just fine. Blake called Josh to the pits after just 14 laps of practice (in the half hour session) and discussed changes to make the car even better. Unfortunately, when Josh tried to start the car to return to the track, a carburetor problem left the car sidelined for the remainder of the practice session.

The carburetor problem was fixed just as the cars lined up for qualifying and Josh took the track 26th of the 28 cars that would make up the field. After watching the first 25 cars qualify, and watching a number of cars turn laps in the low 23 second area, Josh turned a lap of 22.95 seconds…beating the #2 qualifier by more than a tenth and a half to take his second pole of his rookie season. At the drop of the green flag, everyone knew that the Josh’s lap was no fluke as he quickly jumped out to a 20 car length advantage and held that for the first ten laps when the races first (of many) caution flags flew. Josh withstood a number of yellow flags and continued to lead at lap 25 when the field got the news that the race would be cut to 30 laps due to time constraints. After the next re-start, Josh led for one more lap and then the car in second got under him at the start finish line…bringing two other cars with him. Now in forth, with three laps to go, Josh didn’t give up. As the field took the two-to-go signal, Josh passed for third. On the white flag lap, Josh got under the second place car off of turn two and raced down the backstretch…into turn three and four for the final time. Josh was less than 1000 feet from his first top three of the season when the fourth place car drove into the left rear of the #11 Monte Carlo spinning him off of turn four. The car stalled in the spin and once Josh got it started, he crossed the finish line in 21st position. A tough, and unnecessary, finish to an otherwise GREAT day.

Chris Butler (Josh’s dad) on Saturday’s race: “I think we are all at a loss for words after that race. We were looking at a second place finish…no worse than third…and Josh was just taken out. I would like to say it was a “racing deal”, one of those things that just happens during close racing…but it wasn’t. That guy could have avoided Josh, but having more car than talent is a hell of a thing…he just ran over Josh. This guy’s done it to us before…he’s done it to just about everyone in the series before…I’m not sure why we were so surprised by it. Josh and Blake handled it about as well as could be expected, but they were sick about it.

I’ll tell you, Josh and Blake did an amazing job on Saturday. They work together so well and the last month or so has really been fun to watch. Blake put that car exactly where it needed to be on Saturday, he only made air pressure adjustments all day, and Josh just drove the wheels off the thing. Those two kids are beating a lot of teams with many more years of racing experience and a lot better funded…they should be very proud, I know that Joy and I are very proud of them.

The car didn’t take any damage in the spin, so we’ll get it ready for the 200 lap race in Florence on November 11th and see if we can get Josh an early birthday present…a win would be great.”

The Allison Legacy Series takes a week off before heading to the Florence Motor Speedway on November 11th for the year ending 200 Autumn Championship.