Chase Purdy Sniffs Victory Over Weekend, Claims Pair of Top Five Finishes

Chase Purdy’s double header weekend in the Southern Super Series continued his pattern of improved super late model performance over the last year. On Friday at Five Flags Speedway he finished fourth and he scored a fifth-place result on Saturday at Mobile International Speedway after leading a portion of the race.

 

Friday’s festivities kicked off the first of two consecutive days of racing for Purdy, who had spent time earlier in the week testing his NASCAR K&N Pro Series car at South Boston Speedway in Virginia. He clocked in eighth quickest in time trials on Friday in the Blizzard Series 100, the first of a handful of Southern Super Series races which can qualify a driver for the Snowball Derby. Methodically, Chase worked his way forward in his first visit to Pensacola in a super late model and finished fourth after the 100-lap contest was finished.

 

“Friday was really good,” Chase said after the race. “I honestly thought we had about a sixth or seventh place car after practice. The crew worked to pump me up as the race went on and proved to me we had a better car than what I thought. We fought hard and got a top five finish behind some of the biggest names in super late model racing and I was happy with that.”

 

Saturday continued the momentum from Pensacola when DGR unloaded Chase’s No. 97 Bama Buggies Toyota. Chase practiced as high as second-fastest and started the race inside of row two in third. Quickly, he began to plot his moves forward and took advantage of a mid-race restart to grab the lead just past the halfway point. After pushing his car to the limits to grab the lead, Purdy began to feel the effects of a blistered right-rear tire, a condition which caused him to slow and fall back to fifth at the end of the race.

 

“I was really proud of the car my DGR team gave me at Mobile,” he said. “We had speed from the time we unloaded and we fought hard all race and I even led my first laps in a super late model. We had a really good race going until our right-rear tire started chunking and I went backwards quickly. It was like a light switch with no warning, so I’m not exactly sure what happened there. We still had a great finish and a great run, and I’m looking forward to our next race together.”

 

Chase’s next super late model race is scheduled for May 21 at Bristol Motor Speedway as part of the US Short Track Nationals. The next time Chase climbs into his NASCAR K&N Pro Series ride is this coming weekend. Twin 100-lap races at South Boston Speedway are on the agenda for Saturday, May 6.

 

PMG PR