Johnson Motorsports Grabs Top Ten Finish at Waterford
Waterford, CT — With two consecutive Friday night rainouts at Stafford Speedway, the Johnson Motorsports team and driver Doug Coby brought their white #10 SK Modified to the Waterford Speedbowl this past Saturday for a 35-lap NASCAR Whelen All-American series event. This was the team’s second visit of the season to the 1/3 mile shoreline oval, and their 8th place finish contributed a total of 32 points to their NASCAR state championship point total.
In the first practice session of the day, the team showed everyone on hand that they had not missed a beat from their pole qualifying effort and 3rd place finish at the Speedbowl’s season opening Bud Nationals by posting the fastest time of the practice session.
After another solid practice session, the #10 found itself lined up in the 8th position in an eight car heat race. Starting at the rear proved to be no problem for the Johnson Motorsports #10, as Doug used the outside lane to his advantage and drove to the front of the field in the first 6 laps of the 10 lap heat race.
“Winning heat races isn’t a huge accomplishment and not what we go to the track to do, but we were curious to know how good the car would be on the outside because we made a few minor changes to it. I think we proved it worked pretty good out there,” said Doug.
After lining up in the 12th starting spot for that night’s 35-lap feature, Doug and the #10 moved up into the top ten by lap two, and occupied the 6th spot by lap seven.
“We were looking good for the first 10 laps,” said Doug, “But then there was a restart where we were in 6th and I thought we’d keep going forward, but we kind of went backwards for a while. For some reason we weren’t getting the forward bite we needed on the outside and we lost a bunch of spots.”
In the next few laps, the #10 went from 6th to 10th, and stayed there until a caution came out with six laps to go.
“A few cars tangled up in front of us, so that moved us up to 6th,” added Doug, “I thought we were going to contend for a top five finish, but the car that started fourth on the final restart went backwards on the outside, so that pushed us back to 8th at the end. Overall, we learned that some of the things we tried worked great, and that we probably should have made a few minor adjustments before the feature. It was still a lot of fun and I’d like to thank Glenn and the guys for helping in the shop and at the track.”
Coby and the Johnson Motorsports #10 might make their third trip to the Speedbowl sooner than expected, as the early forecast once again calls for rain this Friday at Stafford. Should Stafford suffer their third consecutive rainout, fans can expect to see the Johnson Motorsports team at the Speedbowl for their May 17th “Little League Night” event.
Sources:Johnson Motorsports PR