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Dirt Inc.
Chassis - Maxim
Engines -
Driver - Chad
Hillier
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Hillier Survives Rough Race at Grays Harbor
ELMA, WA (August 27)
– Chad Hillier and the #5c DIRT Inc. Maxim were fast in Monday’s World of
Outlaws event at Grays Harbor Raceway; they just couldn’t dodge enough
errant racecars.
Collisions with
Jonathan Allard early in the “B” Feature and Brooke Tatnell
during the first lap of the “A” Feature resulted in rough night at the
track made famous by the late, great Fred Brownfield.
“On the start of the
‘B,’ Allard drove into the side of us, and bumped us almost all the way off
the racetrack,” Chad
said. “By the time we gathered it back up, we fell back quite a ways. That
was a bummer because we had a good enough car to transfer into the feature.
When you lose four or five positions on the start, it’s tough to catch back
up.
“We used a provisional
because we thought we had a decent car, but (Steve) Kinser
and Tatnell got together on the back stretch
right in front of me. Tatnell got sideways and I
had nowhere to go. I drove up over the front of him. It was a bad deal.”
Hillier’s 109.383-MPH
lap was the 22nd-fastest time trial in the 42-car field and .427
seconds off fast-qualifier Joey Saldana’s pace. He stated inside the third
row and finished eighth in the star-studded Second Heat Race.
“Qualifying wasn’t the
best, but we were close,” Chad
said. “’We needed a little bit more. That one row (in the heat race) really
makes a difference.
“There were plenty of
good cars in our heat race, that’s for sure. We needed to be just a little
bit better to transfer out of it. We were a little too free in the heat,
but we made some changes for the ‘B’ and the ‘A’ that helped quite a bit.
“It was unfortunate we
couldn’t run all 40 laps in the feature. We just couldn’t stay out of trouble,
but that’s the way it goes sometimes. It just wasn’t one of our better
nights. It seemed like everything we did didn’t go well for us.”
Finishing 26th
in the main event allowed fellow World of Outlaws Kevin Gobrecht
Rookie of the Year candidate Sam Hafertepe Jr. to
close to within 10 points of Chad in the standings.
Hillier and his DIRT
Inc. teammates are looking forward to Wednesday’s World of Outlaws event at
Cottage Grove Speedway, a high-banked, ¼-mile oval in Cottage Grove, OR.
“It should have a good
race at Cottage
Grove ,”
Chad
said. “They’ve put quite a bit more banking into it. You get into lapped
traffic pretty quick there. I’ve run there quite a bit, so I know what to
expect. It’s one of those West Coast tracks we used to hit once or twice
every year. I just hope our luck doesn’t keep going the way it has. Maybe
that will be the place it turns around.”
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.
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