After a start to the 2014 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East season that wasn’t up to their standards, Brodie Kostecki and the No. 43 Arcoplate team were pleased with their first top-10 finish of the year in the Kevin Whitaker Chevrolet 150 at the venerable Greenville Pickens Speedway half-mile Saturday night.
Kostecki has been continuously improving since the beginning of the season. The eighth-place result at Greenville Pickens continued the trend of improving on finishes in each of the season’s four races to date. The first-year team with the 16-year-old Kostecki behind the wheel of the Arcoplate Toyota kept their heads up and continue looking toward the future under the leadership of crew chief Doug George.
“The Arcoplate 43 team, this weekend, definitely moved forward from Bristol,” said Kostecki. “It wasn’t easy, but our crew chief Doug George and the guys really got together and we had a good car. We qualified eighth and finished eighth, in the top-10. We are making the progress we want to and the plan is to keep improving from here.”
In the 150-lap main event, which was split by a halfway break in which teams could put on new tires at the lap-75 mark, Kostecki made this way through the field in the first half and was sure to maintain that position in the final half.
“In the race we started off pretty tight,” said Kostecki. “So we drove up through there at the end of the 75-lap stint and got a pretty good start for the second stint. We made some adjustments on the pit stop, loosened the car up a little bit and then we had a pretty decent car. We just struggled on the restarts; it just took a little bit for the tires to come in. But there were definitely some great calls by my crew chief Doug George and the rest of the crew. I have to thank them for putting in some really hard work this weekend.”
Up next for Kostecki and the Arcoplate No. 43 will be the Blue Ox 100 at Richmond International Raceway in Richmond, Virginia on April 25.
Arcoplate Racing PR
“We’re moving on to Richmond in a few weeks,” said Kostecki. “And Doug has got some really good experience there so we definitely hope to run good and continue these kinds of finishes.”
