Poole Cranks Up the Heat, Wins 2nd in a Row, Fifth of 2010

Story by: Chris Owens ~ chris@RACE22.com

Dillon, SC(August 30, 2010) -- The UARA-Stars made a second stop Saturday night at the Dillon Motor Speedway. After the carnage that took place back in April, most teams just looked to survive the one hundred and fifty lap affair without damage.

Practice saw Scott Turlington and Brennan Poole top the sheet. Turlington followed up his quick time with another fast time in the second practice that saw him second on the board. Matt Kurzejewski was the fastest car in the second session.

Garrett Campbell has been a roll lately winning the race at the Concord Speedway a few weeks ago for his first career win in the series. Saturday afternoon he proved he was going to be a force to be recongned with as he claimed the pole with a time of 16.368 second. RA Brown, Brennan Poole, Kyle Grissom and Ronnie Bassett rounded out the top five.

Rookie Clint King would not start the feature event. King had a rear end problem in qualifying coming off turn two. "I put it in all four gears and nothing happened," said King after qualifying. "We didn't bring a backup car and aren't up in the points so we are just going to take our time. We might get back out for the race, we might not." King didn't make it out for the event.

Campbell and Poole quickly jumped out to a huge lead over the field as RA Brown didn't go on the start and allowed Poole to get by. Brown now had to deal with the rookie Bassett who was looking to get by. Down the backstretch the two made contact but continued on with minimal damage.

Hard racing in the back of the pack brought out the first caution of the night when Michael Rouse went around off the front bumper of Tyler English. English who has had terrible luck this season with engine problems would later blow a engine when the car overheated.

Rouse had the same fate as English. Lap twenty three saw Rouse exit the race with a fire underneath is machine. The driver was okay but something internal in the car wasn't. After winning the Myrtle Beach race back in June, Rouse has gone winless with just one top five and two top ten finishes.

Tempers were heated after Rouse was done for the night. On the hook back to the trailer, Rouse let Tyler English know how he felt about the whole situation.

Under the caution, Julia Dawson broke a front ball joint on her car and was towed back to the pits. After some repairs were made she returned to the track several laps down and out of contention for the win.

Campbell didn't get away on the restart like he did the initial start of the race. This time Poole was all over the rear bumper and was looking to take the lead. Poole made several attempts to get around but was unsuccessful at getting by. Poole was finally about to get by Campbell for the lead on lap forty nine.

RA Brown and Ronnie Bassett had another run in on the restart. Brown's clutch went out and he did not go at all. Bassett had nowhere to go and tore the right front fender off his car. Bassett made repairs to his car and returned to the track several laps down. Brown was done for the night and already loaded on the trailer before the race was over.

Tyler English brought out the third caution of the night when he grenade a motor going into turn one. It looked like the space shuttle had just taken off when you looked down to turn one and two that's how big his motor let go.

"The radiator hose came off and overheated the engine," said a disappointed English. "We have been struggling all year and with motors and the bad thing about this is, that was a rental motor. But, we finally figured out that it was the motor in the car that was hurting us all year."

Under the caution Garrett Campbell pulled to a stop in turn four. After being towed back to the pits, it was found that Campbell had a broke ball joint on the front end of his car.

Now that Poole was restarting from the lead, it didn't take long for him to check out over the rest of the field. Coleman Pressley had now worked his way up to the second position after starting all the way down in eighth. Kyle Grissom was now riding in third.

Not a lot of action was happening on track as only ten cars remained on the race track. Several cars had engine problems in the late stages of the event. Randy Hawkins pulled in the pits a few laps after the restart with an apparent motor problem. Not really running for points the team parked for the night and loaded up on the trailer.

Matt Kurzejewski, the winner at Tri-County last month had a fast car all afternoon long but could get the job done in qualifying and started tenth. Kurzejewski was riding in the fifth spot when he pulled his car to pit road with another motor problem. Kurzejewski was done for the night.

With Kurzejewski now out of the race, Scott Turlington moved up to the fifth spot but was doing some hard racing with Robert Johnson who wanted the spot. Turlington looked like he burnt his tires up as Johnson got by for fifth and quickly dropped through the remaining field.

Lee Tissot quietly drove his Ford Mustang home to a fourth place finish. Tissot started sixth and dodged several incidents up front and brought the car home clean. Tissot had to fight late in the race with what appeared to be a tight race car but never had a challenge from Robert Johnson.

Dillon Motor Speedway regular Logan Bunning showed everybody that he could run with the UARA-Stars. Bunning qualifying eleventh but was fast in practice all afternoon. Bunning rode around in the top ten for the majority of the race and brought his car home in the sixth spot.

After early damage with RA Brown, Ronnie Bassett had the fastest car late in the race and was making passes around the guys on the lead lap. Bassett was several laps down and came home ninth.

The battle for the second was shaping up late in the race as Kyle Grissom slowly caught Coleman Pressley for second. The battle didn't last long as Pressley knew Grissom was faster and let him go in turn one. Pressley said he thought he broke a rocker arm which is why he was running slower at the end of the race.

Back up front it was all Brennan Poole. Poole led the final one hundred and three laps in route to another dominating performance. This was his second win in a row and fifth of the season as he continues to try and make up points on Pressley, who leads the points with just two races left in the 2010 season.

UARA-Stars 150 at Dillon
1 - Brennan Poole #5
2 - Kyle Grissom #32
3 - Coleman Pressley #59
4 - Lee Tissot #27
5 - Robert Johnson #11
6 - Logan Bunning #46
7 - Scott Turlington #48
8 - J.J. June #33
9 - Ronnie Bassett #04
10 - Julia Dawson #1
11 - Matt Kurzejewski #10
12 - Garrett Campbell #12
13 - Tyler English #18
14 - R.A. Brown #60
15 - Randy Hawkins #3
16 - Michael Rouse #23
DNS - Clint King #07
 

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