It was only a pair of rain shortened practice sessions but the expected contenders for the inaugural ASA STARS National Series race at Five Flags Speedway became considerably clearer on Friday night.
World Series of Asphalt Super Late Model champion, Casey Roderick, making his first start in a Super Late Model at Pensacola since joining Anthony Campi Racing posted the overall fastest time with a 16.625 second lap around the historic Florida half-mile.
This is the same combination that captured the Snowflake 100 in December and Roderick is really excited to see what they have on Saturday night.
“It felt pretty good,” Roderick said after the session. “You know us racers. We’ll always say it can be better. I feel like the second time out was better than the first time out.
“We wade a few changes and felt like we got it better. We’ll keep digging on it and see if we can make it better.”
That’s because there is one more final practice on Saturday afternoon before time trials and the race that night. Bubba Pollard was second fastest in both sessions and isn’t even sure what he has to learn during the day on Saturday.
It’s also a reflection on how confident Friday night made him feel.
“We were really close to being fastest in both sessions there, but second in both, really unloaded good, car has speed and really happy with everything,” Pollard said. “The way the tires are and when we have to take them, I didn’t want to run too many laps there and you can’t learn much tomorrow because it’s going to be so hot and slick
“But we do want to make sure we have a good feel going into qualifying.”
This is a 10-tire race with stage breaks at Lap 75 and Lap 150 for a 200 lap race. It pays $20,000 to the winner and $6000 for second. Snowball Derby winner Derek Thorn anticipates taking two tires per stop but Pollard thinks some will take all four at one time.
“But really, I don’t know,” Pollard said. “There are going to be some cars that take two, four and there will be a mix. We’ll all be holding on at the end and I think the best car is going to win. I think. We’ll see how the strategy goes.
“It’s going to be interesting. As long as you have a good race car, I think you can come up through the field. Now, it’s going to be tough with 36 cars here and some good quality cars. It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be fun, and I just hope we’re there at the end.”
Speaking of Thorn, he was fourth in both practice sessions and thinks he’s close to being amongst the contenders too. While he is still driving a FURY Race Cars chassis, this is a Shafer Motorsports entry instead of the Campbell Motorsports car he’s dominated this place in the past half-decade.
“I haven’t found the exact feel I want but I think we’re really close with the limited amount of time we got,” Thorn said. “Everyone is in the same boat and we’re just fine tuning. We’re on one set of tires for this session and tomorrow.
“This place is a cheese grater and once you get so many laps on your tires, you don’t learn a whole lot. I feel like we have a really good baseline, started off on the right foot and he see if we can make some gains.”
Also looking for big gains on Saturday is 2020 Snowball Derby winner Ty Majeski who was taking his car apart with crew chief Toby Nuttleman after practice.
Wholesale changes.
“We came here with some different stuff, and I don’t know, it wasn’t quite right,” Majeski said. “I don’t think we were way bad. We didn’t mock or anything. I don’t like the feel of it. I don’t know that it was totally done the way we anticipated so we’re just going to play it safe and go back to our normal front stuff on this new car.
“We’re just going to go back to our safe ground and bring this back sometime that we have more time than just these two 30 minutes to test it. That wasn’t enough time for us to really understand what was going on. We’ll roll it back and fire off with something more familiar and go down swinging.”
The only notable incident of the night was a single car crash involving Billy Vanmeter hitting the wall in Turn 3.
“I caught a slow car in the wrong place, got in the marbles,” said VanMeter. “I was on new tires, I don’t think I was fully aired up pressure-wise. It went straight in the fence. I tried to hit the brake and slow it down.
“It was a mistake on my part. I should have let him go, backed out of it more.”
The ASA National Tour Sunshine State 200 is scheduled to start at 8:30 ET and will air live on Racing America. The results from the second session can be found below.
- Casey Roderick – 16.625
- Bubba Pollard – 16.629
- Preston Peltier – 16.758
- Derek Thorn – 16.784
- Timothy Watson – 16.827
- Austin Nason – 16.838
- Hunter Robbins – 16.839
- Carson Hocevar – 16.900
- Ryan Luza – 16.909
- Matthew Craig – 16.910
- Jeremy Doss – 16.919
- Jacob Gomes – 16.920
- Jett Noland – 16.946
- Stephen Nasse – 16.947
- Blaine Rocha – 16.966
- Cole Butcher – 16.986
- Dan Fredrickson – 16.987
- Michael Hinde – 16.989
- Ryan Moore – 17.003
- Gabe Sommers – 17.007
- Dustin Smith – 17.009
- Boris Jurkovic – 17.012
- Jake Finch – 17.045
- Connor Okrzesik – 17.052
- Grant Enfinger – 17.055
- Ty Majeski – 17.066
- Billy VanMeter – 17.103
- John Bolen – 17.123
- Giovanni Ruggiero – 17.126
- Dakota Stroup – 17.150
- Albert Francis – 17.221
- Derek Kraus – 17.235
- Tony Elrod – 17.235
- Clint Folsom – 20.577
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