By Gary Thomas
Petaluma, CA – April 12, 2010…Venturing to the Petaluma Speedway on Saturday night Princeton, California’s Mason Moore continued his recent trend of success at the sticky 3/8 mile clay oval and drove to a season-best third place finish in the main event with the California Sprint Car Civil War Series.
The podium effort was Moore’s career best result at the Petaluma Speedway and marked his third top-five finish in four starts at the track since joining the Friends & Family Racing team at the end of 2008. “We’ve done really well as a team in Petaluma every time we’ve been here and we were fast all night long on Saturday so I couldn’t ask for much more,” said the 19-year-old driver. “The first few races this year haven’t gone exactly as planned so it feels pretty nice to have a good night and get on the podium for Tooch, Alan and all my guys.”
A 29-car field checked into the pits at the Sonoma-Marin County Fairgrounds facility and going out 23rd in the qualifying order Moore cut the third fastest lap of the evening on his opening go-around, before having a throttle linkage issue slow the second lap considerably. “Qualifying has definitely been good to us in Petaluma and I definitely think that’s been a big part of our success at this place,” said Moore, who has timed-in among the top-five during each occasion he has driven the Roseville Precision Inc., Levin’s Auto Supply No. x1 at the speedway.
Starting outside row number three in his heat race Moore would make a strong move on the high-side during the opening lap to charge up to third early on, where he eventually went on to finish and transfer into the main event. When the number eight pill was drawn for the A-main inversion it then put the F&F Racing, CRV Carbon Solutions, Sierra Single Ply sprinter in the third row for the scheduled 30-lapper. The initial start of the feature saw Sacramento’s Willie Croft, who started directly in front of Moore, hit the wall and bring out a caution, which moved the driver known as “Primetime” up to the second row.
On the next start Moore would bicycle slightly in the first set of corners and settle into fifth, before making the move by Gilroy’s Kurt Nelson and Cotati’s Jake Haulot to slice his way into third. A number of stoppages slowed the feature to a near crawl, never allowing for much traffic to come into play and the 19-year-old drove off to cross under the checkered in third when the race was completed five-laps shy of the full distance due to curfew. “I was getting a good run working the bottom in turns one and two, but really needed some heavy lap traffic to do something with the leaders,” Moore commented. “We’ll take a third though and try to get a win real soon because we have a lot of racing coming up.”
This coming Friday will see Moore in competition at the Silver Dollar Speedway in Chico, as he hops back behind the wheel of the Rolling Hills Casino, Moore Insurance Services, Withrow Motorsports, NOS Energy Drink No. 22 for the opening Feather Falls Casino 410 point race.
On Saturday the Princeton, CA racer will then head for the Placerville Speedway to compete aboard the F&F Racing No. x1 in the opening Red Hawk Casino 360 point race at the El Dorado County Fairgrounds bullring. Last season Moore made six starts in weekly action at the track and tallied a trio of top-five finishes, as well as a pair of fast qualifier efforts. “I really love running Placerville and we were definitely fast there last year,” he said. “We came close to winning a couple times, but just didn’t get it done and I’d really like to get my first win there so hopefully we can breakthrough on Saturday.”
For more information on Mason Moore and Friends & Family Racing log onto http://www.fnfracing.com