BNS: Waterford: Dale Quarterley race notes

Dale Quarterley Enjoys Solid Seventh Place Finish At Waterford

(Waterford, Conn. - July 17, 2004) - Dale Quarterley continues to impress at the short tracks that make up roughly half of the NASCAR Grand National Division, Busch North Series schedule. Following a sixth place performance last week at Lake Erie Speedway in Pennsylvania, Quarterley put together a second consecutive top-ten finish with a seventh at Waterford (Conn.) Speedbowl.

Quarterley's Bully Hill Vineyards Chevrolet, which carried in-car cameras for the SpeedTV broadcast scheduled for August 28th, was fifth quickest in the single practice session held earlier in the day, and that translated into a ninth place qualifying effort, which is Quarterley's best qualified run of the season.

"We made a couple of quick changes this week trying to get it to qualify a little bit better, and it definitely helped," he said. "Hopefully it'll do what it's been doing in the past, which is maintaining in the long run. I think we'll be decent this week. Looking at the time sheet, there's a tenth and a half of a second between the pole and us, and in the past couple of weeks it's been more like three or four tenths. We'll be in good shape come race time."

The Kobyluck Corporation 150 proved that Waterford Speedbowl is a tight racetrack that Busch North cars find tough to pass on. Quarterley settled into seventh place at the start of the race, and remained there until he moved to sixth just before halfway. His best chance at moving into the top five came just after lap 100, when he moved to the inside of Bryon Chew and almost had the pass completed, but caution came out and Chew was awarded that spot. After that, Quarterley's main concern was Joey McCarthy who was challenging from behind.

Quarterley gave up sixth to McCarthy after a side-by-side battle with twenty laps to go, and one more caution meant that Quarterley could not build up the momentum necessary to try and return to sixth place or better. His seventh place finish is his fifth out of eight races this year, and has him eighth in the season points standings.

"The leaders played follow-the-leader all night," he said. "We were up to fifth at one point, I had just got by the 99 [Chew] for fifth but caution came out and they gave the spot back to him after I had just spent fifty laps trying to get by him. We went green again and I tried to get him again, but while I was trying to get by the 99, the 8 car [McCarthy] wound up getting by both of us, and I still didn't get him. Then the cautions were coming, and like every week I was better in the long runs and we just didn't get any at the end of the race. There was nothing I could do about the 99 after that. Even though we were quicker, we just couldn't get position on him where we could get alongside him and get by him. But things are going better for us all the time, we had a decent race car and have a decent finish to show for it. We're running near the front and scoring points, so we're on a nice little roll here."

New Hampshire International Speedway is Quarterley's next destination, as the Busch North Series joins three other NASCAR series, including the Nextel Cup and Busch Series, at the Magic Mile for three days of racing. Quarterley will have two new sponsors to show off when the Busch North Series takes to the track with the HDNet broadcast scheduled to start live at 3:30 p.m.

-ajc-