By Daryl Turford
Sunnyvale, Texas-Sam Hafertepe Jr and The Plumbfast Racing Team got off to a fast start this past Friday night with The World of Outlaws (WoO) at Lowe’s Motor Speedway as Hafertepe earned his 2nd Fast Time award of the year but a faulty MSD box threw wrench in any hopes the team had for success and Sam ultimately settled for an 11th place finish.
Sam was the second car to time trial and laid down a strong time trial lap. 22 more cars would attempt to knock off Sam’s lap but ultimately Hafertepe would capture his 4th career WoO fast time award and 2nd of the season. Following Sam’s time trial run however Hafertepe would experience brake problems which resulted in the team thrashing to get prepared for their heat race.
Sam was scheduled to line up in the 4th position in his heat race and needed only to run in the top 6 to earn a spot in the dash. Disaster struck however in the form of a faulty MSD box which forced Sam to roll to a stop before the race went green.
“We’ve been having a lot of fuel pump problems lately and we mis-diagnosed that the problem was with the pump,” said Sam. “Had we realized it was a problem with the box we’d have had no problem fixing it and getting back out. Mike and Daryl had the box with them and ready but we didn’t know we needed it.”
As a result of not finishing in the top 6 in his heat Sam had to line up in 19th for the feature event.
Hafertepe moved up a few spots on the initial green flag to move into 17th. A lap 15 restart gave Sam the opportunity he needed and he was able to charge past 7 cars. Ultimately however that would be as high as Sam would get before dropping to the 11th position when he was passed by Jason Meyers.
“The car just wasn’t really that good,” explained Sam. “We only had warm ups and qualifying to base our setup off of and we weren’t terrible we just weren’t as good as we needed to be to run up front from the back with these guys.”
Sam and the team are now headed to Tri-State Speedway in Franklin, PA were they will try to make amends for Friday and earn Sam’s first career WoO feature win.