NASCAR

BNS: Lime Rock: Dale Quarterley race notes

Dale Quarterley sixth at Lime Rock, picks up two points positions. Dale Quarterley, who won at the 1.53-mile Lime Rock Park road course last year in NASCAR Busch North Series competition, finished sixth in Saturday's running of the Burnham Boilers ...

Edited: Dec 22, 2003, 5:59 AM

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Dale Quarterley sixth at Lime Rock, picks up two points positions.

Dale Quarterley, who won at the 1.53-mile Lime Rock Park road course last year in NASCAR Busch North Series competition, finished sixth in Saturday's running of the Burnham Boilers 200, a race that was postponed twice due to rain and was shortened due to rain during its running. Quarterley's eleventh top-ten finish of the season allowed him to pick up two positions in the series points standings, moving him up to sixth in the final standings.

Considered one of the best road racers in the series, Quarterley parlayed a test day two weeks before the event into a strong car, but that car did not hit the track at all on the weekend the race was originally scheduled for. Rain washed out the first attempt, and the teams were forced to come back the next Saturday to try again.

On the second attempt, an hour of practice was completed and qualifying was almost complete when rain arrived again and cancelled the rest of the day. Qualifying results were thrown out and the cars were lined up according to owner points. This hurt Quarterley as he put up the best time in qualifying so far, 53.8 seconds, that most likely would have had him starting further forward than his eighth place points put him on the starting field. The rain continued, and the race was postponed to October 26th.

Coming back to run the race, Quarterley quickly worked his way to the front at the drop of the green flag. After just one lap he was up to third place, and tried to take second place on lap nine, but was blocked and had to fall back in line. After a lap 12 restart, he made another stab at second and pulled the pass off. On lap 19 he made his pit stop and the 1/4 LEY Racing crew added fuel and changed the left side tires of his Land O Lakes Chevrolet. He re-entered the race deep in the field.

Rain stopped the race on lap 28 when Quarterley was sitting outside the top twenty. After an hour and change of waiting out the rain, the field took to the track to finish drying the track. Twenty laps were run under caution before the field was set to resume racing. After just three more laps, under another caution, Quarterley had moved up to thirteenth. During this yellow, the race director announced that there would be just five laps to go. In those last five laps, Quarterley charged to seventh.

"We just wasted so many laps drying the racetrack, and that didn't leave us enough laps to get back up to the front," he said after the race. "Then during the pit stop we had a problem with one of the tires, it didn't want to come off. That kind of backed us up when we pitted. The crew guys have been great all year, so we decided to put some tires on, and it helped us at the end of the day. Coming back through, we were thirteenth or fourteenth with five laps to go, and we wound up seventh at the end. We were all just stuck right there together. I had them all covered. Leighton and Kobyluck were fast, but we had everybody else covered.

"In those last five laps, I made a ton of full-on aggressive moves, but without touching a soul," Quarterley continued. "We definitely had a car capable of winning, we showed that at the beginning. But with the weather, it came down to who guessed the strategy the best and who stopped at the right time. We lost in a couple of categories there, but we don't think the race got away from us."

-ajc-

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