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Five for Fighting ... | More >> | Recap Archives: 2005 | 2004 | 2003

Start - 5th | Competitors - 24| High - 1st | Low - 21st | Finish - 5th | analyzer report
Race Report - May 10th, 2005 - Race 10 of 33

The track to tough to tame lived up to is historied reputation this past week when the Lightning contingent of drivers battled for every inch of real estate lap after grueling lap.

Race the track, that's the adage that the veterans will share with you. Inglin did just that all night long as he started fifth on the grid, slinked back to eight in the early going and ran in stealth mode for the middle stages of the race. Other then a few early lap cautions, everyone was pretty well behaved and several long green flag runs were posted mid race. Inglin conserved his tires in hopes of a good run and the strategy started to pay off near the 100 lap mark as Kevin started to come forward and had the leaders in his sights. Fate would intervene as the caution flew and everyone was relieved, except for Inglin, to go to pit road and bolt on four fresh ones.

Fate would deal a cruel blow as action in the pits and not on the track would vastly affect the outcome. Inglin ducked in the pits and by maintaining a higher average pit road speed, drew up alongside Bart Hoyle while going down pit road. Bart was on the outside on the narrow pit road and started to squeeze toward his pitbox. Inglin and Hoyle brushed up against each other and then warp shoved the rear end of the AMSOIL mount and turned it sideways in to the pit wall. Several cars were quickly on the scene as pit crews ran for the hills. In what had to be a first, Dan Bailey warped/careened off Bart's car and into the unfortunate Barrett Canning. Canning's car ended up UPSIDEDOWN on pit road which is something you don't see very often. The unfortunate losers were Inglin who received considerable damage and Canning who was done for the night.

Inglin got his mount refired and brought it down to the attention of his crew. The rest of the night consisted of battling a loose race car as rear spoiler damage made the AMSOIL Chevy and handful. One additional incident happened on lap 134. Inglin and Greg Sinclear came off the second turn side by side for eight position with Sinclear on the outside. Sinclear bounced his car

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hard off the outside wall and into Inglin who was passing on the inside. Both cars spun as Inglin once again found himself against the concrete with damage. Undeterred, he brought the car to the attention of the crew and decided to just ride to the finish. As luck would have it, the track to tough to tame earned it's reputation in the later stages as one by one front runners encountered problems. Finding himself in eight place on a final restart, Inglin headed for the apron as a mix of twisting metal and smoke filled the air in turn one. It was the right lane to choose as Inglin emerged from the smoke in fifth place for the final rundown.

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

"What a crazy race. We ran to our game plan in the mid stages and it looked like things were going our way. We were outstanding on the long run and had that middle segment gone a few more laps, well we might have found our way to the lead.

We've been off lately when it comes to Darlington. We're still not fast but the setup was real comfortable this week and I kept it between the fences all night. That pit road deal was unfortunate. I probably shouldn't have drawn up on the inside of Bart there but I was trying to get all the track position I could. I feel bad for Barrett as he certainly got the short end of that deal.

I look over at the podium and still can't believe we're coming out of here with a fifth. Gray and Coulliard were in front of us so we still didn't gain any in the points but at least we held the damage to a minimum. I'm going to be off for a conference trip (real life) next week and we'll see if we can take in the Richmond race from the hotel room.

Until next week... "