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Dirt Inc.
Chassis - Maxim
Engines -
Driver - Chad
Hillier
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Qualifying Woes Spoil Hillier’s Homecoming
ALGER, WA (August 24) –
Chad Hillier’s Skagit Speedway homecoming got off to a fast start, but a
tough qualifying position spoiled opening night of the World of Outlaws’
double-feature event at the racetrack where he made history as a three-time
champion.
Hillier, who claimed Skagit’s sportsman sprint car championship in 1996, its
360 sprint car title in 1998 and its 410 sprint car championship in 2001,
drove the #5c DIRT Inc. Maxim around the high-banked, 3/10-mile oval in
11.688 seconds to pace the h0t-lap session. Unfortunately, his
11.865-second qualifying lap was the 29th-fastest in the 43-car
field.
“We were in the first
set of hot laps and that’s when the track started to come in,” Chad said,
“but when we qualified we were in the last group when the track started to
slow down.”
Hillier, the only
driver in the history of Skagit Speedway to win all three sprint car
championships, started eighth in the First Heat Race and finished sixth,
just .577 seconds behind former Selma Shell Racing teammate Paul McMahan.
“Qualifying put us in a
rough spot,” Chad
said. “We got up to sixth in the heat race, but we needed a little better
restart toward the end. In the first heat race, the bottom still had some
slime on it. It wasn’t wide and racy, but it started getting wider as the
top started coming in in the last few heat races.
I tried to run the top on the restart, but the car was a little tight. We
just needed a couple of more breaks. If we could have made it through the
heat, we wouldn’t have had the greatest starting position, but we would
have moved forward in the feature.
“We got our nose under
Paul a few times, but couldn’t get by him. You could throw a blanket over Jac (Haudenschild), Paul and
me in the heat race. Sometimes, Jac was on the
top, Paul was in the middle and I was on the bottom, and vice versa. We all
raced each other hard for that last qualifying spot. It was good racing.”
Hillier raced past
three cars in the “B” Feature, but finished four positions shy of qualifying
for the “A” Feature.
“We had a good car and
ran well; we just didn’t catch the breaks we needed,” Chad said.
“Halfway through the ‘B,’ we picked up something on the track and it cut
the inside of the right rear (tire). It cut about a half-inch long gash in
it. It started going down and it was flat by the time they threw the
checkered.
“We got going pretty good through the middle. We were all over (Jeremy) Campbell , but just couldn’t quite get by him. We were faster
than the car ahead of him but, with the tire going down, it was tight on
the top and he was running the bottom. That was a bummer.”
It was also
disappointing that Haudenschild (11th)
and Terry McCarl (12th), who rank
ahead of him in the point standings, denied Hillier an “A” Feature starting
position when they used provisionals.
“We would have taken a
provisional if we had the chance,” Chad said. “We had a
competitive car, but our qualifying spot just hurt us all night. It really
all comes down to qualifying. You can put yourself in a good spot or a bad
spot with that. There’s a lot of emphasis on those two laps.”
Hillier and DIRT Inc.
will return to Skagit Speedway for Saturday’s finale. Both Skagit racing programs are being taped for SPEED
Channel telecasts. Friday’s race will be televised on Sunday, September 2nd,
at noon EDT, and Saturday’s action will air on Sunday, September 9th,
at 2 p.m. EDT.
DeWitt Industries
Racing Team Incorporated invites racing fans to visit its website at www.dirt-inc.com for news, results, sponsorship information and
photographs. The team is sponsored by Jansma
Construction, H.B. Jaeger, Fast Wings, Maxim Chassis, Pro Shocks and Weld
Racing.
Ideas, suggestions, questions or comments can
be sent to: SprintCar PR.
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