JOANIDES SCORES ANOTHER TOP 5 FINISH
(7-22-06) Borenstein Racing
with driver Nick Joanides continue to show their championship caliber,
scoring their sixth straight top 10 finish and third top 5 finish in the
last four races. The point leader in the series has been dominant all
season long with no other team even being close, but Borenstein Racing
is breaking away from the pack and making a serious charge toward the
leader. On Saturday, they equaled their best qualifying run of the
season, posting the 2nd fastest lap among 30 competitors, but more
importantly, their lap time was just a tenth and a half off of the
leader and more than two tenths a
head
of the third place qualifier. The last time they qualified second, they
were four tenths off, so the significant gain gives the team hope that
they are making the right changes and will soon be challenging for the
top spot.
The team was poised for their best finish of the season from their front row start. The pole sitter however decided he did not want to give Nick any room on the outside coming to the green flag. Trying to stay out of the marbles on the outside of the track, Nick held his line when the pole sitter came up hard into his left front tire. The contact knocked the alignment of the front end off and caused the car to be extremely tight. Nick dropped back as far as the seventh position before making a late race charge up to the fifth position.
"It's not the finish we had hoped for because the car was handling great and I thought we could get at least a top two finish out of it, but the pole sitter decided he wanted the whole race track to himself on the pace lap and decided to knock me out of the way and ended up bending something in the left front. But we learned a lot today and gained a ton of speed with the car, so I'm really looking forward to the next race and think we are really close to challenging for the top spot", said Joanides.
With his finish, Nick maintained seventh place in the point standings, but closed to within just 9 points of the fifth place driver.
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