Josh Schneiderman and the Deuce Motorsports #49 team turned in a trio of strong performances last week. A podium finish in Sprint Invaders action at the “Super Half-mile” Eldon Raceway on Friday highlighted the weekend. The West Burlington, Iowa driver also pulled double duty at Knoxville Saturday, finishing seventh and 13th in those features. Tonight finds the team with the Sprint Invaders at the Iowa State Fair Speedway in Des Moines. They will be competing again with the NSL at Knoxville on Saturday.
Josh would start outside row one of his heat at Eldon Friday. “We drew well for a change,” he says. “We were able to kind of cruise to the win there. It’s kind of a neat old fairgrounds. I hadn’t personally been there. It was definitely exciting to start with a heat win.”
The format would see two sets of heats, with the finish of the first round being inverted. That put Josh outside row four. “That format is kind of cool,” he says. “I enjoyed the opportunity to be able to race and improve my position. We were able to come up to fourth, and we were definitely better than that. It took us a little extra time to get by a couple of cars.”
After a fourth place run in the Dash, he would line up in row two for the feature. “We fell back to fourth or fifth early on,” says Josh. “We didn’t get a good start on the bottom. We were able to work up to third. We reeled Jarrod (Schneiderman) in for second, and he spun out. We didn’t need that caution. It was unfortunate for Jarrod too. He was running well.”
It took a while for Josh to get the heat back in his tires. “We went with the H12, which was a little harder compound than most people,” he says. “We tried that, and on the restarts it just killed us. The wily old legend (John Schulz) was able to get by us for second there. He got going really well on the top there and he was able to sneak by us and get a win. All in all, I was happy to see him win. If you can’t win, you’d like to see your uncle or your brother up there.”
The third place finish at Eldon set up double duty in both the 410 and the 360 at Knoxville Saturday. “The car felt good hot lapping,” says Josh of his 410. “We ended up drawing a higher number for qualifying. Some guys early were setting down good laps on the bottom. I thought that may be the place to go. After time trials, they told me Kerry (Madsen) set quick time on the top. It was one of those times where I should have seen what there was up top.”
The 22nd quickest time overall put Josh in the back of his heat. “I like the NSL format with the points,” he says. “It takes a little emphasis off of qualifying and on to the racing in the heats. We had a nice heat race going. We had some fortunate luck with a couple cars falling out, but I made a bad read on a restart and lost those spots back (finishing seventh).”
With only four cars transferring from the B, Josh surged from sixth to finish third. “We were extremely nice in the B,” he says. “I was excited for that. Running both classes, I was pretty worn out when the feature came along. When the lights went out at the start of the feature, I was kind of happy to get a little break and some water.”
He would move up from the back row and finish 13th. “We were really nice in the feature,” says Josh. “We were up to tenth or eleventh, and I made a mistake down in turn four. I hit the berm pretty hard. That allowed (Lynton) Jeffrey to get away from us, and Davey (Heskin) to get back by us. We ended up 13th, and overall, we were really happy. The car is heading in the right direction.”
The team kept busy with the 360 Saturday too. “We knew going in that we are running 2004 technology with the 360,” says Josh. “We don’t have the motor to compete up front. The track got slick early, which did fall into our hands a little bit. Qualifying was o.k. (17th) and we had a good run in the heat (third).”
Starting 12th in the main event, Josh would drive to a seventh place finish, good enough to be the hard-charger. “We marched up through there several positions,” he says. “We really could have used a yellow late in the race. I don’t think we even had a caution (the last 14 laps were non-stop). I think we had something as far as getting in the top five, but a seventh there was nothing to be ashamed about.”
Josh was happy with the efforts. “We had a good weekend overall,” he says. “All three races, Eldon and the two at Knoxville went pretty well. We’re excited to get to Des Moines tonight with the Sprint Invaders and back with the NSL at Knoxville Saturday.”
- administrator on Jun 23, 2016
- Article Date: 6/22/2016