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Consistency Beginning To
Pay Off Although the margin is small, and the season is still early, Michael Hale has managed to move himself into the 3rd place position in the 2004 season points standings. It wasn't due to a dominant night of racing either, it was simply due to the fact that Michael has been one of the most consistent drivers of the season. After another top 10 finish in Saturday night's main event, 7th to be exact, Michael has now finished in the top 10 in five of the six main events this year. After one week off, Michael was back in action on Saturday night. An amazing 24 cars showed up for Saturday night's event, and at the end of it... almost half of them went home bent and bruised. Fortunately for Hale Racing, Michael wasn't one of them. "We had all sorts of issues in practice, the car had been acting weird all day," said Michael of his modified just before his opening heat race. Although issues plagued them in practice, the team was still able to pull off a 5th place qualifying time of 16.14 seconds around the 3/8 mile oval. "Still pushing" was about all Michael could say after that one. Due to the 24 car field, the track issued 3 heat races to be ran instead of the typical 2. Michael was placed in the 3rd heat race, and started in the 3rd row on the outside groove. Although Michael was still fighting the car, he was still able to move his way up to 4th, and finish in the top 5. With a field of 24 starting the main event, the team knew that patience would be a big key to finishing well in this event. Sure enough, it was the biggest key. 3 laps into the race, a huge pile-up on the backstretch occurred, and close to half the field was affected in one way or another. "Cars were braking and slowing in a hurry, I wanted to go low, but there were cars spinning down there too, before I knew it, I saw a hole open between two packs of cars, I slid through it and when I didn't feel anything hit, I floored it and got out of there," said Michael of the accident. Car owner Red Hale said to Michael following the accident, "We were going to bring you in, but you'd just gained almost 10 spots, so we just went ahead and kept you out there." After the wild caution, Michael went from 20th to 12th. Michael remained there, racing with the 99 car for 8 laps before moving by him on lap 13. A few cars ahead of Michael got together, and Michael checked up to avoid hitting them. Doing so allowed two cars to go by, and he fell back to 13th. After going back to green, Michael was passed by the 24 car, and then he began his journey upward. Within the next 7 laps, Michael moved up 4 spots to put himself into 10th. On lap 27, he moved himself ahead of 2 more, and found himself in 8th position. 5 Laps later, he made his final pass, and then battled with the 48 car. Unfortunately he didn't have quite enough to get by him, and finished up 7th overall. "We're not too disappointed, considering all the issues we had, and the way the car was working tonight, 7th isn't bad at all," said Michael after Saturday night's main event. After looking at the official lap charts, Michael had the 5th fastest laptime of the field. As always, the team would like to thank all of it's fans for coming out to watch us on Saturday night. Even on the rough nights, it amazes us how many people still support the team and encourage us for the next event. We greatly appreciate you spending your hard-earned money to come watch us each week, and we hope you'll continue to do so. We'd also like to thank all of our great sponsors that continue to stick with us week in and week out. This team would not be what it is without you, and for that, we appreciate your help in making us a competitive race team. We hope all of our fans and sponsors will come out next weekend to cheer us on when the team takes to the track for a night of two feature races.
Story by
Brad Edwards |