Brenden Queen: It’s Time to Win on The Tour

Butterbean says it’s time to start capitalizing.

Through the first three races of the CARS Tour season, Brenden Queen has passed a lot of cars and been in contention to win each race but has been denied by a variety of factors like track position, misfortune or just getting beat.

It’s been a fine start to the season — finishing seventh at Southern National, second at Florence and 10th at Hickory — but Queen knows this opportunity with Lee Pulliam Performance has the potential to be exceptional.

If that turnaround in capitalization is going to immediately happen, it will have to start on Friday night at a track Queen has very little track time at, in the form of Ace Speedway in Altamahaw, North Carolina.

Well, what I remember about that night, is that I showed up late because Langley rained out,” Queen said. “It was 2018, and I got hardly any practice and I got in a big wreck.”

All he could do was laugh about it.

“So, I try to erase that memory. So, talking to Lee and watching film, I know, you use a lot of breaks here. Got to keep your brakes under you. Looks like you can run a little bit harder throughout the race.

“Not having to save as much, need to be able to use the apron a little bit here in (Turns) 3 and 4. I think the good cars were able to do that. So, I’m just going to just be really smart with the adjustments I make to make sure it drives good when it needs to.”

Fortunately for Queen, he has two days of practice on Thursday and Friday to get acclimated.

I got to take full advantage of all the time I got here today to not waste the time getting up to speed,” Queen said. “I need to be up to speed that first run out and be able to focus on getting the car better, getting the car driving to my liking.

“So, today is a very important day because of how important track position is. You want to have speed to qualify out front because like you saw at Hickory, I had to come from so deep in the field. Once I got there, I didn’t have nothing left.”

And that’s kind of been the story of his season so far.

Queen fell back by choice early in the race at Florence and finished second to Carson Kvapil. He started 16th at Hickory and used it up just to finish inside the top-10.

He’s still looking for that complete race where he starts up front, runs up front and finishes there too.

“I’m putting a lot of that behind us,” Queen sad. “So it’s, you know, you can’t live in the what ifs. So, it’s a new day, live to race another day is what I said after Hickory and I have been looking forward to this race big time just to help me turn the page.

“We need to win. (Kvapil) has been winning and we let one get away in Florence. It’s time for us to seal the deal.”

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