July 4th, 2002 Racing

Thursday July 4th

On tap for this evening was the Firecracker 50, extended feature for the late models. There was a full crowd on hand and we wanted to give the fans a show! Mark set a fast lap in qualifying with a 19.6 which put him as the fast car for the time being, unfortunately Mark was beat out as the fast qualifer by 1 car. That put Mark on the inside of row 3 for the fast dash, Mark was fast and didn't have time to wait. He stuck with the inside line and got up to 3rd place, with the white flag in the air Mark captured 2nd place. The car was flying and we were looking at taking the lead unfortunately we were out of laps. Come feature time Mark lined up on the inside about mid pack. After taking hot laps, Mark pulled in the pits and then went back out, only to run a couple laps and pull in and park the car. A front suspension piece broke, Mark was hoping for a caution in which he could come in and fix it and go back out. Once he went down a lap the car stayed parked. The car was such a rocket in the dash, that I think Mark could have got in the top 3 easily. Seems every time the points leader has problems in which we can capitalize on, we have problems also. Thats how it goes, keep our heads up and keep fighting tough, our performance on the track shows we are not giving up at all!

Qualifying - 2nd
Dash - 2nd
Feature - 20th
Points - 2nd