September 16, 2006
Elkin, NC

Tough Start Ends With Best Finish of the Year at Friendship

Three months ago, Josh surprised everyone by sitting on the pole for the 50 lap feature at Friendship Speedway. With that in mind, everyone on the Horizon Technologies/Conterra Ultra Broadband team was looking forward to the return trip to Friendship on Saturday night. The first practice had Josh’s #11 Monte Carlo slightly tight, but his lap times were competitive to the other weekly top runners. The car got better in the second practice; however, there was some concern that it didn’t get up to speed until several laps into the run.

Crew Chief, Blake Harris made some adjustments prior to qualifying and, even though we were only one tenth of a second slower than our pole lap in June…the best Josh could do was 12th in the 23 car field. Worried that the car wasn’t responding to the changes that were made, Blake decided to make some bigger changes before the 50 lap feature event. On the start of the race, Josh had a tough time finding a hole on the bottom of the tight racetrack and found himself in 22nd position by the end of lap three. Sitting 20th with the first caution flew, Blake asked Josh if he wanted to come to pit road for adjustments since he had little to lose as far as track position. Ever confident, Josh declined the pit road invitation and told everyone that the car was fine and that he would get back to the front. Josh had patiently worked his way up to 12th by the halfway point of the race and continued to tell the crew that the car was good. With about 20 laps to go, two cars spun in turn three right in front of Josh and some other competitors…quick reaction by spotter Bret Hylton, and a great move by Josh, got Josh through what was sure to be a race ending crash. Now in the top ten for the first time all night, Josh continued to work his way to the front, sitting in 6th position with about 10 laps to go. When several of the leaders got together inside five to go, Josh took advantage of their bad luck and found himself in 4th position as the field came to the final restart with three laps to go. Josh fought with Rookie of the Year leader, Brandon McReynolds over the last three laps, holding onto the 4th spot…getting Rookie of the Race and the Bell Helmet 4 – Safety Award. The finish was Josh’s second top five to the season and his third consecutive top 10 finish.

Josh on Saturday nights run: “Blake and Dad were pretty worried after qualifying, but I told Dad not to worry, we were going to be okay. I have a ton of confidence in Blake and the decisions he makes…I knew that we would run well, even after we went all the way to the back on the start. I don’t think that they believed me when I told them that we didn’t need any changes during the caution early on…but the car was fine, I just couldn’t get to the bottom on the start. There were at least two wrecks that should have taken us out, Bret did a great job helping me through those and, to be honest, we got a little lucky…maybe a lot lucky. At the end, I was really driving the car into the corners hard and it was working great…I really wanted to be the top rookie and I knew that Brandon would be coming hard…so I just really pushed it for those last few laps. I think a few more laps and we might have been able to get third.

I really want to thank Blake, Bret and Dad…they worked on that car all night and gave me a ton of help during the race. It was nice to be able to come through the field and get to the front. I’m sure those guys would rather I started up front and stayed up there…but it really was a blast passing all of those cars.

We go to Orange County in two weeks; I’ve run well there every time; however, we’ve only finished once out of the three races. I’m looking forward to heading back there and redeeming myself, hopefully getting another top five.”

The Allison Legacy Series takes a week off before heading to Rougemont, NC (Orange County Speedway) on September 30th for a 50 lap event.