Pollard Celebrates New Year in Red Eye Victory Lane
SENOIA, Ga. — Bubba Pollard earned his third win in as many months when he took the checkered flag in the Red Eye 100 Saturday night at New Smyrna Speedway (FL).
The Senoia, GA driver qualified third, but never raced outside of the top two all night.
Pollard led the first 16 laps before relinquishing the lead to Brad May. But the 29-year-old driver held steady in the second spot, then made his move with 20 laps to go to retake the top spot and pull into Victory Lane for the first Super Late Model race of 2016.
“I felt like we had a decent race car,” Pollard said. “It took us awhile to get going, really. The car kind of got tight on a long run. Brad (May) there, I let him go at the beginning of the race. I knew he was driving pretty hard, I was hoping he’d burn the right front off of it, and he finally did and we started catching him.”
While Pollard was happy to pick up his first win of the year, the trip to Florida was also in preparation to defend his Winter Showdown win February 11at Kern County Raceway Park (CA) and continue to build a playbook for his new Senneker Performance car. With Pollard behind the wheel, the car has now won three of the four races it has competed in.
“We just came down here to get some seat time and some experience in this race car, it’s new to us,” Pollard explained. “We’re just trying to learn as much as we can before we get to California and some of these bigger races here the next couple months.”
More information about Pollard’s 2017 racing plans will be announced soon.
For more information on Bubba Pollard, visit www.bubbapollard.com, follow him on Twitter, @BubbaPollard26 and “Like” his Facebook fan page, Bubba Pollard Racing.
Sources: 51 Sports