BNS: Waterford: Joey McCarthy race notes

Joey McCarthy Gets Second Top-Five Of 2004 With Fifth At Waterford Speedbowl

(Waterford, Conn. - July 17, 2004) - Joey McCarthy, of Randolph, New Jersey, was rewarded for his hard work and sacrifice over the last few weeks with his second top-five finish in NASCAR Grand National Division, Busch North Series competition. McCarthy drove his No. 8 RV Tech Chevrolet to a fifth place finish in Saturday's race at Waterford (Conn.) Speedbowl, picking up a position in the season points standings to sit ninth as the season crossed the halfway mark.

Coming off a seventh place finish at Lake Erie Speedway last Saturday, McCarthy discovered an engine problem during the week. A new engine from Fischer Engineering was placed in the car for the Waterford race and debugging that cost the STI Motorsports team valuable practice time. But when qualifying time came around, McCarthy was ready to go and posted the tenth fastest lap in time trials.

"There's a problem with the carburetor, and it's a brand new carburetor," he said afterwards. "We've got a brand new motor in the car as well, so we're going through some growing pains. The car seems okay, and I think once we get this straightened out we'll be all right. We didn't get a lot of practice at all on new tires so it was kind of new to me when I went out to qualify on new tires. I didn't really know where we were at."

Passing was at a premium during the running of the Kobyluck Corporations 150 at Waterford. McCarthy fell to eleventh at the start of the race and ran there for the next sixty laps. He took advantage of other teams pitting to move up to pick up a spot as the race went back to green with just over half the distance to run.

On the lap 72 restart, McCarthy moved up to ninth. On the next restart, he tried an outside move on Brian Hoar for eighth, but was denied and fell back into line. He tried again to pass Hoar on the outside at the hundred-lap mark and was not only successful doing that, but he continued on and passed Bobby Dragon for seventh. He tried for sixth on the outside of Dale Quarterley but couldn't complete the pass.

After a lap 126 restart, McCarthy made one more push to get closer to the front. He wound up going outside Quarterley again and finished that pass, then continued on the high side to try and take fifth from Bryon Chew. He just completed this pass as the final caution of the night came out, and he ran to the finish of the race in fifth place.

"There's no doubt that we deserve to be here," he said after the race. "We work very hard, and financially we're barely making it to the racetrack every week. I definitely have to thank the sponsors that we do have, including Amsoil, Vespia's Tire Center, Organized Chaos Graphics, Driving Impressions. It's our first run with our new Fischer motor, and I'm really happy to be running some of his stuff again. It made a big difference tonight and it helped us out a lot with passing and running side by side with guys. The restarts were killing me, I needed long runs. Other guys would fall off but I still had something for them, I had saved my tires. I could have had a better result tonight if the race stayed green longer than it did, but I'm definitely happy with a fifth place and having the car in one piece.

"We don't sleep, we work hard, and tonight it paid off," McCarthy continued. "I had to drive smart. I think I had something for a couple guys in front of me, but I thought a top five finish would be great and I didn't want to risk hurting the car because we need to take this to New Hampshire. I'm just real happy, and proud of the guys."

McCarthy returns to New Hampshire International Speedway next weekend for the running of the Siemens 125, which will be run the day before the track's first of two NASCAR Nextel Cup Series races and will attract a crowd expected to eclipse 30,000 people as well as a live TV audience on HDNet.

-www.joeymccarthy.com.