Tough Day for Joanides at Cajon

  Nick Joanides and the Colorfast, Jackson Race Cars Monte Carlo seem to start off well as they posted times among the top five in practice, but as has been the case with the Southwest Series this season, the entire field is so tight and Saturday proved to be more of the same. Nick missed the pole by just 2/10th's of a second, but amazingly that put him 25th on the board out of 33 cars. Only 18 cars were taken through qualifying with the remaining cars being forced to run the qualifying race in which only the top two finishers transfer to the main event. Nick started the qualifying race in mid pack, however wasted no time in the short 15 lap event and was second by lap two when the caution flew. Nick took the lead on the lap 6 restart and drove to the win and earned his spot at the rear of the field for the main event.

With such a tight field of cars, Nick knew passing would be difficult and knew he had to be patient and aggressive at the same time as the leaders can begin lapping cars very quickly on such a short track like Cajon which is only a 3/8th's mile track. Nick had move up to the 13th position by lap 65. The field was so tight that the top 16 cars were all running nose to tail. Nick constantly tried to make moves to pass while also trying to protect his position. With the race more than half over, drivers got more and more impatient and on lap 81, two cars running in the top 10 made contact and caused a seven car pile up that Nick was not able to avoid as the track was completely blocked. The contact to Nicks car was not that hard and caused only minor cosmetic damage, however the front bumper did manage to poke a small hole in the radiator and with so few laps remaining, the team did not have enough time to get it changed and get Nick back out, resulting in a disappointing 22nd place finish.

"We had a great car, but the car needed three laps to get grip on sticker tires in qualifying and unfortunately we only get two laps to qualify and it turned out to be very costly. With this field so tight, you can't afford to be off at all in qualifying and we kind of made our own bad luck tonight. If we would have qualified better, then we probably wouldn't have been caught up in the accidents that normally do happen in the back of the pack. Fortunately the car didn't get hurt too bad, so we'll fix it up and go back at it in a few weeks at Stockton", Joanides commented.