Waterford Press Release (July 24, 2005)
Contact: Penny Aicardi
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Stefanik Survives Waterford Confines With Fifth Place Finish
Waterford, CT (July 24, 2005): After getting the taste of victory twice already this season, it was hard to be happy with a fifth place finish in the Town Fair Tire 150 at Waterford Speedbowl. Still, the driver of the No. 55 Burnham Hydronics Chevrolet was just that. He admitted the result was about as good as he could have done with the handling of the car all night.
“Our car just wasn’t that good. It was probably better on the restarts using the outside, but I didn’t get on the outside that much because the car was really tight,” Stefanik explained. “It was really hard for me to get on the throttle and keep the car turning. I had to pinch it down and it hurt our corner speed. I’m certainly happy with a fifth. We work extremely hard as a team, and we can hold our heads up. We probably had a tenth place car.”
Stefanik struggled all day to be as dominant as he had been in the first four races of the season. In qualifying, Stefanik turned a lap of 15.330 seconds (86.888 mph) to earn a tenth place starting position.
Stefanik maintained that spot through the first half of the race, just biding his time through several caution periods. The double-file restarts, however, took a toll on his Burnham Hydronics Chevrolet.
“My poor body is destroyed all the way around – not the front, but both sides. I hate that for the guys because these cars are so labor intensive,” Stefanik said. “I don’t know if the double-file restarts were exciting for the fans, but I hope it was because it came at a great cost to these teams. There is an awful lot of work to do on these cars, but it is the nature of the game and the way it’s being played right now.”
Stefanik gained most of his positions in the closing laps of the race, when accidents took out the second place car of Ryan Moore, and put Brian Hoar at the tail end of the field. Stefanik went from a eighth place position at lap 127 to fifth in only two green laps of competition.
“We’re very fortunate because we weren’t a fifth place car, and we picked up a bunch of spots due to the misfortune on some other driver’s parts. It was nothing we inflicted – it was just casualties of the game,” Stefanik said.
“There was a lot of side-by-side battles going on. Mike Olsen had to dodge a car that was spun in three and four, and had to take a right. He did the only thing he could do, but the only problem was I was right aside of him. There was probably my scariest moment. I was right on the outside and it just about took the wheel out of my hand. I just wasn’t expecting it,” Stefanik continued. “There was a car spun on the bottom and he had to do what he had to do to get around it. Everything else was just trying to keep it in my lane. When I was on the outside I tried to hustle it, and when I was the inside I was just trying not to lose any spots.”