When it's Not Your Night...

Start - 16th | Competitors - 18| High - 4th| Low - 16th | Finish - 11th

Atlanta is one of several tracks that are called 'quad' ovals. Say what you want, we don't like any of em. No matter what we do, we can't seem to improve our program at these similarly shaped venues. Looking back, we count the following finishes: 21st and 11th for Atlanta, 11th and 13th for Lowes, and 20th for Texas. An average total finish of 15th is nothing to write home about and one thing for sure, the AMSOIL team knows where to put in an effort for next year.

The team unloaded with a very loose car this week. The loose condition persisted through out the race but it was driver error that caused the early problem. On a lap 51 the AMSOIL Pontiac broke loose and while the field was zooming off to turn one, the ECI Express sat on the grass facing backwards. Righting the car, Inglin got going again and was very close to loosing a lap as the leaders were bearing down. A well timed caution allowed the whole team to breathe a sigh of relief.

A restart ensued and was followed by another quick caution. It was during this caution that a scoring snafu finished off any hopes for a top finish. Inglin didn't enter the pit road correctly and was given a longest line penalty. After exiting the pit, Inglin ducked in one more time but was penalized with a stop and go for passing under the yellow. (Editors note: In essence it was an error in the games ability to handle the field positioning while issuing a 'end of longest line' penalty).

Heeding the black flag on the next restart and incurring the 30 second penalty, Inglin was four laps off the lead pace when he returned to action on lap 100.

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Atlanta continued.

Kevin Inglin - "The result was very reflective of the weekend. We were disqualified in qualifying for cutting the course. NASSCAR saw it that way, we saw it as we got loose off turn four and slid through the grass. I saved the car, they said I gained advantage by cutting the course. Go figure...

The car was just a handful. Clouds rolled in during happy hour and the car just wouldn't bite into the track. I did all I could to hold a straight wheel but on that restart I wasn't focused and buzzed the tires. We dodged a bullet and boy was I up on the wheel trying to stay on the lead lap. We got a reprieve when the yellow dropped and to be honest, I'm not sure how much longer we could have held them off.

Then we got that penalty from a dumb move on my part. I was going to stay out and lead a lap but Greg Sinclear stayed on the track too so I dived for pit road. I ran it across the grass and NASSCAR gave us a longest line penalty. I could live with that call but they blew it on the passing on the yellow thing. They say we weren't heading the longest line warning which we were and then they claimed that we passed under yellow. We were heeding the longest line and didn't get word that a car exited the pits after us until we ducked in to top the tank off. Just one of those things that happens but it's frustrating.

To tell the truth, no one was passing tonight. Everyone was trying to conserve tires and I didn't see a single pass all night. We may have lucked out and found ourselves in a better position but I didn't see the front of the field all night. It just goes to show that we're missing something in our program when it comes to these quad ovals. We'll have to take a look at our notes and see what we can do to make some improvements in this part of the program for next year.

This week we head off to Phoenix. I like the track and hope to keep my nose clean and pull off a top five. We'll see how it goes."

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