Notes

Touring 2 – Podium Quotes

Bill Ziegler, First Place

We did a lot of tire testing here. We put together a setup that we knew we wouldn’t be quite as quick as Don [Knowles] early in the race but as long as I could stay close enough to pressure him late, our tires would be better to pressure him. With the combination of lapped traffic and his tires going away, we got back up to him. I was able to show him a nose in every corner. I was trying to get in his head. We came up onto the front straight and I got up inside him. I had a really good run going on the left side. We got to the kink where Alpha is. I was pressed right against the wall. I was to his door and he started coming across and I though ‘I’ve got no where to go here.’ He came across the front of my car and I spun him. It’s not a good view at 100 mph seeing another car go across the front of your’s.

I continued on and backed off a little bit to assess any damage. I ran pretty slow the last couple to make sure I didn’t have a tire going down.

I really hate for the race to go that way. It was a really unfortunate incident. I’m sure Don thought he had me cleared and everything was okay. He doesn’t drive like that and I don’t either. When the wall is this far away on the left, you’ve got nowhere to go.

Don is my friend and I hate to see it go like this.

Andy Wolverton, Second Place

The last lap, I just kept thinking ‘don’t do anything stupid and fall off the track.’ I saw him coming, but I thought he’d need at least one more lap to get me. I was nervous, but I was okay. Me and Mike, I would like to believe, were both faster than the car that qualified in front of us. He did a lot of vicious blocking and I would have done the same thing trying to hold on to a car as loose as his. Mike got around him and then I got a round him and it was hard reeling Mike back in. I never had to focus that hard to make that many consistent laps to catch him.

Michael Pettiford, Third Place

It was a good race. I deep-braked a guy to get into fourth place and then we were in that status quo. Lapped traffic came in and I got kind of held up. Andy got a chance to close back up. We diced a little bit. I thought we were in pretty good shape and there was one lap where I didn’t get by [the traffic] as good as Andy did, so he got me for second place. There is quite a difference between finishing fourth and third.