Affarano Motorsports announced today that Johanna Long would be getting her first career start of NASCAR’s: Xfinity Series 2015 season at the ToyotaCare 250 race at Richmond International Raceway taking place on Friday, April 24th driving the unsponsored #03 Chevy Camaro of Affarano Motorsports.
“When I first approached Johanna, about driving for us, we sat down and discussed what tracks we felt she could best perform at and Richmond was one of the ones at the top of the list.” Team and car owner Mike Affarano stated in our telephone interview. “In an ideal situation, Johanna would’ve opened the season in Daytona this year and we’d be running for points; however, we were unable to secure the sponsorship that we needed to accomplish that, so we’ve been forced to be more selective of which races to compete in.”
When pressed about the direction of sponsorship and the expected competitiveness for Johanna Long in an unsponsored car, Mr. Affarano was quite frank with me.
“We are actively seeking full or partial sponsorship for the remainder of this year and beyond. I won’t lie, we need it if we want to continue to compete and perform at our best. We felt that it was really important to get Johanna at track that she is familiar and comfortable with and can provide a good showing at; hopefully [being at the track] will help us find that sponsor.”
“As for her being competitive,” Mr. Affarano continued. “We have steadily worked on the car to get it to where we all feel she can be competitive. We understand the importance of the hopes and wishes of Johanna’s fans, as well as, our own expectations and our goal is that if Johanna races, she races. We don’t want to disappoint the fans or ourselves by having her relegated to just doing ‘start and parks’, we want her to run and run as good as she can and think we have the car to do that at Richmond.”
“One thing is for sure,” Mr. Affarano added, “folks will have a hard time missing Johanna out on the track, as far as I know, she’ll be the only one driving in a Hot Pink, Chevy Camaro.”
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