After two nights where mechanical issues arose, Brian Brown and the Casey’s General Stores/FVP #21 team are ready to get back to the racetrack. The Grain Valley, Missouri driver finished fifth with the NSL at Knoxville Saturday and eighth in Des Moines on Sunday. Thursday night, the team will head to Fairmont Speedway in Minnesota for NSL 360 action, before racing down the road at Jackson Motorplex Friday, and back in Iowa at Knoxville Saturday with the NSL.
You were fifth quick Saturday at Knoxville.
It was really our worst qualifying effort this year, especially at Knoxville. We can put our finger on a few things that we normally have, that we didn’t Saturday. It was just two pretty sloppy laps on my part. We really need to clean that up with the Outlaws coming to town in two weeks.
Your heat had Terry McCarl and Justin Henderson on the front row, and Sammy Swindell, Dusty Zomer and Bronson Maeschen were also in there. You had to start fifth.
It was by far the toughest heat of the night. We were able to get up to third. We felt pretty good about that.
You lined up fifth in the feature and battled for a while.
We had a right rear tire low the entire race. On the first red, my bleeder was losing air. We came in after the checkers with five pounds of air. That wasn’t ideal with the conditions out there. Honestly, it was probably the hardest I’ve ever worked for 25 laps in a long time. It was tough to get it around the corner, down the straightaway and back through the corners.
Still, that’s a pretty good finish considering your issues.
You’ll have nights like that. If you have an issue like we did with the tire and salvage a fifth, that’s a pretty decent night. That’s the first time we’ve had a bleeder issue in I don’t know how long. Our guys do a phenomenal job with that.
I know your two main sponsors were represented at the Iowa State Fair Speedway on Sunday.
FVP had about a hundred customers and employees there in Des Moines. I got to spend some time with them. It’s always good to race that close to Casey’s headquarters too. Don Lamberti was there and he’s a tremendous supporter of our team. I wish we could have given them a little better finish.
You were fifth quick again Sunday. Then you had some issues in your heat race.
It was really slick and you had to hit your marks. You either hit it or you didn’t. We didn’t hit it perfect for sure in qualifying. We had a bit of an ignition problem in the heat. We had to stop there, and we were able to get back to fifth. That really cost us, because we needed to move forward to make the top eight redraw.
As it was, you started in the fifth row.
We felt like after they reworked the track, we were in a good spot to go forward. We went from ninth to sixth on the first lap. Then I made two bad corners, and the first thing you know, you’re back to eighth. We kind of rode around in a high speed parade after that.
It was a tough weekend overall wasn’t it?
It was one of those weekends where we had a few gremlins. We’re excited to get back racing tomorrow night at Fairmont with the NSL 360’s. We’ll also be at Jackson on Friday and Knoxville Saturday. We’re in the mode where we want to get back to the track and race as fast as we can.
Follow Brian on the Web, Twitter and Facebook!
Follow Brian at his website located at www.BrianBrownRacing.com!
Also keep up with FVP, Casey’s and Brian on Facebook and Twitter at the following links…
Twitter Links – @BrianBrown21, @FVPRacing, @CaseysGenStores
Facebook Links
Brian Brown Racing – www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-Brown-Racing/200630163294222
Casey’s General Stores – www.facebook.com/pages/Caseys-General-Stores/112073528804354
FVP Racing - http://www.facebook.com/FVPRacing?ref=ts&fref=ts
- administrator on Jun 01, 2016
- Article Date: 6/1/2016