Gus Dean Finds First Pro Cup Victory in Memphis
After Six Second-Place Finishes, South Carolinian Takes Home the Big Prize
With six runner-up finishes to his credit previously in the series, Bluffton, South Carolina’s Gus Dean finally went to CARS X-1R Pro Cup Series victory lane over the weekend in the KOMA Unwind Liquid Relaxation 150 at Memphis International Raceway.
The fateful trip was the 19-year-old’s first to the famed Tennessee 3/4-mile track and after being nervous to start, drawing on past experience put the South Carolina-native at ease.
“We had a fast car,” said Dean. “This is the biggest track I’ve ever been on so I was a little nervous going there, but when we got there I had a blast the whole time. Believe it or not, it actually reminded me of when I raced go karts because they were so draft-dependent. The cars danced around a little bit in the wind, a little bit more than I was expecting them to, but once I got used to all that the car was on the top of the charts all day – we were really fast.”
After making the necessary positive changes to his No. 56 Chevrolet following practice, Dean qualified on the outside pole and ran the first stage of the event steadily in the top-three.
“We made some huge improvements between practice and qualifying,” said Dean. “I think our fastest time in practice was a .70 and our fastest time in qualifying was a .40. That put us on the outside pole and then we took off and got passed by Brady Boswell in third. It was a smaller car count on a larger track so we only had one caution in the first half. So we stayed there for most of that first half and ended up passing Brady about 10 laps before the halfway point.”
Following the four-minute halfway break, the field redrew for their restart positions. After redrawing the fifth-position, Dean was able to advance to fourth when the green flag flew before a tangle with former series champion JP Morgan set the field once again.
“The guy who was in fourth ended up working on his car past the four-minute point,” explained Dean. “So he had to go to the rear. We started fourth and on the initial restart and we got into JP Morgan, I don’t know if he missed a shift or they were saying something about the rear end messing up, but we ended up getting into him. I had actually hit the brake in time, but I was pushed from behind into JP causing him to go around and ended their day. I felt sorry for those guys for that, they worked hard.”
On the next restart, Dean was able to restart from third and pull away from the field with leader Caleb Holman.
“We started third after that,” said Dean. “And then Caleb Holman and I checked out on the field pretty much and ran the rest of the half out until about 50 or 45 laps to go when I made the pass on Caleb. I fought with him side by side for probably three laps until I finally cleared him for the lead and then we walked away from him by a good bit. Towards the end he had saved enough and made a charge to come back to about two car lengths from us, but he ran out of time I guess, and we ended up pulling off the win.”
Up next for Dean will be a slight schedule change for testing plans before the PASS South Super Late Model Series heads to Southern National Motorsports Park (NC) on May 31, where Dean was a winner in the series’ last trip to the 4/10-mile oval.
“Kenly is a favorite track of mine,” added Dean. “We have great setup sheets from Kenly and we really haven’t had that much time this year to test the late model. We’re going to do a little testing that weekend up there and hopefully go two in a row at Kenly in the PASS Series.”
For more information on Gus Dean, visit www.gusdean.com, follow him on Twitter via @GusDean and “Like” his page on Facebook, www.facebook.com/gusdeanracing.
Sources: 51 Sports