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Patison Finishes 6th at Martinsville
After a string of bad luck that included being caught up in a wreck at Iowa Speedway and being wrecked on the white-flag lap after leading the entire race at Toyota Speedway, Jason Patison and team rolled into Martinsville looking to turn their season around.
Patison hit the track for Saturdays practice and promptly laid down some fast times, good enough for 7th quick in the first session. When qualifying came around Patison was feeling confident and new that the car was good enough to start up front. Unfortunately when he went out for his time trial the car had break issues and he was unable to drive the car deep into the corner like he had in practice. Having to lift early to get the car through the corner, Patison turned a lap 2 tenths of a second slower than he had in practice, qualifying the team 20th for the 200 lap event.
“I went out for my run and the brake pedal went to the floor, it started to pump up and get harder as the run went on but I wasn’t able to get in a good rhythm and lay down a lap. The only thing we can figure is that we made too many mock-runs during practice with the ducts taped off and boiled the brake fluid in the calipers. This would create some air and cause the soft pedal, hopefully it is worked out now and will be fine for the race,” stated a disappointed Patison.
When the green flag dropped it was apparent that the brake issue had worked itself out as Patison worked his way through the field. By the half way point Patison had worked his way into the top 10 before pitting for tires on lap 114. Restarting 14th after the pit stop Patison again went to work, using the bottom groove around the ½ track to work through traffic. On lap 175 Patison was up to 6th place and was running lap times consistently equal to or faster than the race leader. The field was lined up and ready to take the green for the final 25 laps when the skies opened up, officials brought the cars down pit road and shortly there-after the race was called due to weather conditions.
“We had a great racecar today, our Lucas Oil Chevrolet was great on long runs, I think we definitely could have worked our way into the top 5 and possibly challenged for the win but I am very happy to have a strong finish and the car in one piece,” said Patison during post race interviews.
The 6th place finish moved Patison back into the top 10 in the 2010 championship standings. With 7 races to go on the schedule Jason Patison Racing team looks to build on this momentum as they head to Loudon Speedway on June 26th for their next event.
All of Jason Patison Racing’s events will be televised on the SPEED channel so check your local listings for airtimes and visit www.jasonpatison.com or www.lucasoil.com for more info. Jason Patison would like to thank all of his sponsors for their support: Lucas Oil Products, E3 Sparkplugs, RockStar Energy Drink, GEICO Powersports, K&N Filters, R&L Carriers, MagnaFLow Exhaust and SpeedCo.
