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USAR: Rockingham CS: Lucas Ransone race notes

Ransone Brings Home Top Five Finish First Time at the Rock Rockingham, NC: Lucas Ransone, driver of the ...

Ransone Brings Home Top Five Finish First Time at the Rock

Rockingham, NC: Lucas Ransone, driver of the #00 KRG Utilities Ford Fusion, showed everyone what a rookie could do on Saturday at Rockingham Speedway in the USARacing Pro Cup Series' Aaron's 150 presented by Black's Tire and Auto Service. Ransone fought until the end, with a three car battle for two top five finishing positions. When the checkered flag waved, Ransone had edged ahead of #73n to bring home a 5th place finish.

"We had a real good car," commented Ransone. "My guys worked hard all weekend. We will take the top five finish."

After a strong day of practice on Friday, Ransone was confident heading into qualifying. His confidence paid off as he was able to turn the 7th fastest time of the afternoon. Then all he had to do was wait for the race to begin on Saturday.

As the clouds started to roll in on Saturday afternoon, the drivers took to their cars to start the longest race of the year. For Lucas Ransone Racing, the name of the game was conserving tires. When the green flag waved, Ransone immediately started moving up. By the time the first caution came out on lap four, he was already sitting in 5th.

As the laps ticked away, Ransone's car began to get loose in the middle. Crew Chief Darrin Shaw made the call to tighten the car up when they brought the car in for gas a third of the way through the race. With quick actions made by the pit crew, Ransone had the quickest pit stop of all the cars that pitted.

The adjustments made to the car looked like they worked well and Ransone moved up a couple spots. Unfortunately, as the green flag laps ticked by, Ransone's car began to loosen up again causing him to slide back through the field.

When a caution came out on lap 86, the crew once again went to work on the car putting four new tires on and topping Ransone off on gas. After inspecting the tires, the crew noticed the left rear tire was almost bald.

With four new tires, Ransone began picking off cars and within eight laps he had moved up from 10th to 5th. With the new tires the car tightened up on him. He fought to hold on to his position and was able to long enough to bring home his first top five finish of the Championship Series.

"When we came in for tires we were too loose and we tightened up too much, which dialed us out. We are all still excited about our finish. We have had a bad couple of weeks leading into this race so we will take it and head to South Boston," said Ransone.

South Boston Speedway, on October 31, marks the last race of the 2009 season for the USARacing Pro Cup Series. Ransone leads the Rookie of the Year standings heading into that race.

-credit: lrPR

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