When asked how he felt about World Crown 300 practice on Friday at Cordele Motor Speedway, all Matthew Craig could do was scratch his head and say, ‘I don’t know.’
It was a puzzling day for everyone, really, and it was mostly because of the American Racer tire that no one has raced on here until this weekend.
“They definitely handle a little different, feel a little different and respond different,” Craig said. “It’s not a bad tire. It’s a good tire. It’s pretty consistent, the two sets we had today, but just different than what we’re used to.”
How about Bubba Pollard, who has won more Super Late Model races here than anyone else over the past 15 years?
“This is the first time we’ve had Supers here with these tires,” Pollard told Racing America. “It’s just different. You’ve just got to change some things up and get back some balance. We’ve got a good baseline around here for years now, but it’s quite a bit different today.
“It’ll be interesting. It’ll be a long race. Super long. There will be a little ‘nutrition’ just to get to the end, is the biggest thing. If you can just stay on the lead lap, you’ve got a shot at the end, depending on what you do tire-wise. A lot of games are going to be played, I feel like.
“To be honest with you, we really don’t know. True story. We have no idea. All of us are in the same boat, because we haven’t raced the tire here. We’ve all been on the tire for the most part, but we don’t know.”
Stephen Nasse has won at Cordele but was equally tripped up during practice.
“We kind of messed ourselves up,” Nasse said. “Put on a new set of tires kind of early but they were from (the Rattler 250) and not new from this weekend and ended up hurting ourselves because we slowed down and fought getting better on that set for like two hours.
“That was most of our session.
“We put on a new set and got better, so maybe it’s bad tires, but I don’t know. I feel like we wasted a whole day but maybe that was our fault for not realizing sooner than maybe it was just that set.”
Derek Thorn has never raced at Cordele until this weekend and is also making his debut for Highlands Motorsports.
“It’s line-dependent, very much so, and this was my first time on American Racers,” Thorn told Racing America. “Getting used to the track, getting used to the tire. Obviously, Josh Reeves and Highlands Motorsports have given me a great opportunity here, but we are learning as we go because this is new territory for all of us trying to figure everything out.
“We made some progress today. We gained some speed. I think we led the session in practice three. We have some high hopes for tomorrow, some more things we’d like to try but ultimately ran out of time.”
Thorn was surprised by fall off that exceeded .5 to .7 over the life of the day.
“It’s just going to be tire management,” Thorn said. “These tires fall off a little harder than I thought they would, for how hard they are. I think everybody’s on ice after a certain number of laps.”
Fastest in practice was Gavan Boschele, driving for Wilson Motorsports, who also has never raced at Cordele but knows the expectations are great when driving for Donnie Wilson and Bond Suss.
“We’ve had some good runs and I can’t think of a better place to close out,” Boschele said.
