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AMEN to Atlanta ... | More >> | Recap Archives: 2005 | 2004 | 2003

Start - 13th | Competitors - 28| High - 4th | Low - 23rd | Finish - 5th | analyzer report
Race Report - March 22nd 2005

Marietta Georgia is a suburb situated just north of Atlanta. If you said this town name to the casual observer they probably wouldn't know where you're talking about unless they were from the area. If you said it to an ardent NASSCAR fan, they wouldn't hesitate to tell you its home to the south's fastest racing circuit the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The ECI Express AMSOIL team unloaded this week with optimism after a fine top five finish at Las Vegas. While Las Vegas doesn't resemble the quad-oval design of Atlanta, the race approach is not all that different. The asphalt that makes up the surface has southern granite in it and this makes it almost as harsh on Goodyears as the sand hills of Darlington. Last week the ECI team decided to save tires and hope for long green flag runs and it paid off for them. Starting lucky thirteenth this week, Kevin held is ground for the early stages and then rolled out of the throttle and ran conservative laps while babying the right front. It seemed like a good plan but something was awry. The competition, or more specifically, the lead pack didn't fall off as much as they should have and the AMSOIL Chevy was one lap down after a late race green flag run and subsequent caution.

Many of the fellow racers were in the same situation when the untimely caution flew. On the next restart, Kevin lined up first of the lap down cars and set to work in getting back his lap back so he could race with lead lap cars. Fortunately for him and through the generosity of the leader and eventual race winner Dean Moll, he was able to slip past after the yellow waived and scoot around to the tail end of the lead lap.

Ducking in with only seven to go, the crew chief made the call for two tires which put Kevin back on the track in fourth for the final run after coming into the pit in eighth position. Kevin only lost one position in the final surge to the finish and came away from Atlanta with another early season top five.

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Kevin Inglin, the pilot of the AMSOIL Chevy had this to say after the run:

"Whew, what a finish. I'm still juiced about those last couple of laps. We missed something there on the strategy, that's for sure. We're going to have to go back and review that one. I guess the cool temperatures allowed those lead lap guys, who should have been abusing their tires more then us, to run further then what we've seen in the past. We hung out as long as we could and were making up ground when that late race caution flew. At the time we were one lap down and the best we could have ended up was eighth so in a sense the caution was a blessing. I've got to give a shout to Dean. He let us jump back on the lead lap and we certainly owe him one after that.

Hat's off to the crew. What a great job they did in the pits. The call for two tires on that last stop was right on the money. I tried to hold on to fourth but Stan [Nickle] got a nose under me and I knew he had just taken four tires so I didn't offer up that much of a challenge. Glenn True ran me hard on that last lap and almost got me at the line. All-in-all it was a great run for our AMSOIL, Eastern Outerwear Chevy and I couldn't be happier for the guys. They work so hard on this effort and I'm glad that we're getting results after the terrible string we had in the chase last year.. We've got two top fives in the early season and so far things have gone pretty well and we can only hope that it continues.

We head to Bristol in two weeks and we've had some decent runs there in the past so we'll keep our hopes up and do what we can to keep our hat in the ring for the chase come later this season.

Until next week... "