Beech Ridge PR (August 24, 2003)
Contact: Penny Degre
(508) 234-8684
Broken Shock Shakes Up Stefanik’s Night -- Settles With 14th Place Finish
Scarborough, ME (August 24, 2003): Mike Stefanik made the best of a bad situation with a late-race pit stop that catapulted him to a 14th place finish in the Irving Oil 150 at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway. Stefanik ran most of the event with a broken right front shock.
“The car didn’t really run all that bad on three shocks,” a surprisingly optimistic Stefanik said after the race. “We worked with what we had, and that’s all we can do.”
Stefanik kicked off the day with a qualifying effort of 75 mph when he turned a lap of 16 seconds flat around the 1/3rd mile oval. The speed earned him the 15th starting position.
When the green flag dropped in front of a full house, Stefanik piloted the No. 55 Burnham Boilers Chevrolet by two cars to take over the 13th spot, and was still on the move. When yellow flag conditions appeared at lap 13, Stefanik had moved up one more spot for the restart at lap 17.
Stefanik radioed back to the crew that something was wrong with the Burnham Boilers car, and a pit stop was needed to assess what could be done. At lap 27, their opportunity came to come down pit road where they discovered the broken shock.
“We needed to find out if it was fixable,” Karl Osha, crew chief for the No. 55 Burnham Boilers team explained. “It broke the mount off and everything so we had to run it like it was because there was no time to fix it.”
Stefanik returned to the event for the lap 32 restart at the tail end of the field, but a lap later yellow waved again for debris on the track. Unfortunately, that debris was the remnants of Stefanik’s muffler that tore off when he ran over the rumble strips on the track.
Stefanik returned to the pits at lap 35 so that his crew, led by co-crew chiefs Brian Latuch and Karl Osha, could resolve the problem enough to return to action. When the race resumed at lap 37, Stefanik was again at the tail of the field.
Stefanik worked on picking up places where he could, but his real advantage came towards the end of the race when a caution at lap 121 allowed the team to pit. The Burnham Boilers crew put on fresh rubber and sent Stefanik back out to race.
Stefanik restarted the race at lap 130 in the 17th position. Immediately, he was able to pass two cars and advance further in the field. Because he started the race on the inside of the leaders, Stefanik knew the Burnham Boilers Chevrolet had something left.
“We ran right up there with the leaders for a little while,” Stefanik said. “The pit stop gave us just enough to pick up a few more spots. We really had nothing to lose and everything to gain by coming in. The guys made the right decision.”
Stefanik took the checkers in the 14th spot, and fell to third in the 2003 Busch North Series point standings.