By Bill W
March 21, 2017 – Brian Brown and the Casey’s General Stores/FVP #21 team are looking forward to this weekend’s FVP Western Spring Shootout with the World of Outlaws at the Stockton Dirt Track in California. The Grain Valley, Missouri driver is coming off a bit of a tough weekend at Thunderbowl Raceway in Tulare, California with the WoO.
Things started Friday in Tulare and you timed in 11th quick.
We were able to get qualified decent. Like we’ve said all year, qualifying sets up your night with the World of Outlaws. Being in the top eight is where you want to be. That puts you up front in the heat and in position for a Dash spot. We ran a 12.899 and Donny (Schatz) had eighth quick at 12.879. So that’s the difference between running from the front row in the heat and where we did in third. There’s a lot of parody right now, and it’s a tight field.
You finished third in the heat, which meant you’d start eleventh in the feature.
The heat didn’t see a lot of passing. It was pretty narrow and rough…a typical Tulare deal early on. The team does a good job every time we come here in making me comfortable, and last weekend was no exception.
How did the feature go?
It started to slick off a little bit. We ventured up towards the fence and got into it. That packed the right rear full of mud, and it started vibrating. We pulled off at that point. I think we were in position to run in that eighth to twelfth range. That would have made for a solid night, but things like that happen sometimes.
You didn’t time in as well on Saturday.
We were ninth quick in hot laps. We made some adjustments that just weren’t right and we ended up timing 20th quick. We didn’t go through the holes in one and two as well as we had in the past either. That hurt us.
What can you do about running through those holes?
I’m not a big fan of bouncing around. That’s a place where Chad (Morgan) has worked really hard so we’re not bouncing around as much as most. We didn’t get off the corner very well and we didn’t get down the backstretch as well. It was unique. It was heavy from entry to the corner to the center, but slick coming off all the way down the backstretch.
That meant starting the heat inside row three.
We were actually up to fourth at one point challenging for third. Then we got to racing with Tim Kaeding, and got shuffled back to sixth. We had to run the B and finished fourth.
Tulare is a tough place to start in the back at.
We made a few swings at trying some things. About midway through, it started laying rubber and where we were, there was no sense in continuing. That was enough of Tulare for the weekend.
You have to be looking forward to Stockton this weekend.
We had some success there last year, and were in position to win. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate. This is one of our bigger FVP events of the year. There is always a big turnout of customers and employees, and we want to give them something to cheer about.
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