Chad Hillier Cottage Grove summary

Hillier Endures Tough Night at Cottage Grove

COTTAGE GROVE, OR (August 29) -- A disappointing qualifying lap forced Chad Hillier to start at the rear of his qualifying races in Thursday's World of Outlaws event at Cottage Grove Speedway and kept them from qualifying for the "A" Feature.

Hillier's 10.397-second qualifying lap was the 27th-fastest in the 32-car field and .406 seconds off the pace set by eventual main event winner Joey Saldana. A sixth-place finish behind fellow Kevin Gobrecht Rookie of the Year contender Kerry Madsen in the Third Heat Race forced Hillier to start seventh in the "B" Feature. He drove the #5C DIRT Inc. Maxim past several cars after after sliding off the edge of the high-banked, ¼-mile oval early in the last-chance race, only to finish three positions out of a qualifying position for the "A" Feature.

"We had a pretty tough time," said Chad, who finished 10th in the National Sprint Tour race at Cottage Grove Speedway in 2006. "We qualified poorly to start off with, and we didn't make it out of the heat. I ran off the end of the racetrack at the start of the 'B' and lost some positions and I couldn't make them up in time.

"I wish we could go back and do it all over again. If we could have been a little better in qualifying, we would have been a lot better off. It was a pretty nice racetrack all night; we just didn't quite hit it right. We were just too tight in qualifying and we were just average in the heat race. We were good in the 'B,' but had a problem on the start. We just didn't get qualified well, so we had to play catch-up the rest of the night."

Hillier and DIRT Inc. are looking forward to this weekend's 15th Annual Harvest Classic at Calistoga Speedway in the California Wine Country.

"I ran with the World of Outlaws at Calistoga last year," said Chad, who finished 17th in both "A" Features. "We got a little better every night we were there, so I think we'll be better than last year. Having raced there before, I know some things we have to do to be successful. Hopefully, it all works out and we start running better. I think we'll be OK."

-credit: dirt-inc