There is something to be said about familiarity. Tim Russell has won at Lakeland’s USA International Speedway before and he was pretty confident going back this time for this past weekends FASCAR Sunbelt Series race for Super Late Models.
Russell had a better car than the finish will show, but he did come home fifth.
“That thing was a rocket ship. I mean I could point the car where ever I wanted to go and go,” said Russell. “If they wanted to move up and not give me the outside, I could turn underneath them and drive right under them. That thing was hooked up.
“Then, I don’t know if something broke or we burnt our tires up or what, but we are going to examine it today and find out. We ended up just falling back and fell to fifth.
“I don’t think we would have had anything for (eventual race winner Mike) Fritts. He was pretty stout. I think we had the second-place car there and that’s all. My hats off to my guys though. They worked hard all weekend.”
It didn’t come easy. The team had to change a lot following a recent test.
“We went there and tested last week and we felt like we were pretty good,” said Russell. “We came back and felt like we had a whole different car with us. It was all over the place. So we put our minds together and decided to change some things for the last practice session. The, they came over the loud speaker and said that was our last practice. So right before qualifying we pretty much changed everything on the car and just went for it.
“I think when we go back to Lakeland in July for the 200-lapper, we are going to be pretty stout. We hit on some stuff and my crew chief and tire guy put their heads together and found something.”
