Joey Gase had a solid weekend in his return to his home state. Friday night Gase found victory lane running his crate late model at Hawkeye Downs Speedway. Then Saturday evening he grabbed his career best finish at Iowa Speedway in the U.S. Cellular 250. It all started with two practice session on Friday evening. Gase and crew fine tuned their Iowa Donor Network / Sparks Energy Chevrolet and ended final practice with the 15th fastest lap time. They would take that speed into qualifying making the second round for the third straight week. They would ultimately qualify for the evenings race in 22nd.
Luckily this time around in “The Hawkeye State” the weather was much cooler for the drivers and fans at race time. Joey climbed in his car and was ready to take on “The World’s Fastest Short Track.” The green flag waved and the 250 lap race had begun. It only took 19 laps for the first caution to come out. The caution was drawn when the #9 of Tyler Reddick blew a left rear tire causing him to spin. During the caution, Gase reported that his entry was pretty decent but just needed some more forward drive. Later on in the stage his forward drive would get worse, the car would get really tight in the center and loose on entry. However, only 6 laps after Gase reported this another caution came out that would ultimately end the stage. With Gase’s notes, CC Patrick Donahue called for two rounds in the left rear, packer in the right front, two rounds up on the track bar, fresh tires, and fuel. The guys did a great job over the wall and picked up a few spots on the stop. Gase would restart stage two from the 19th position.
Stage two was a fairly quiet and clean. Gase would continue to ride in the top 20 for the entire stage. At the end of the stage Gase said with the previous adjustments his drive off was way better. He told Donahue that he didn’t think the car needed any big adjustments, but with the track cooling off the car would naturally tighten up as the night progressed. So Gase asked if they should free him up a bit to prepare for this. With that in mind they would raise the track bar two rounds, put four fresh tires on, and fuel. The pit crew did another great job on the stop picking up 2 spots and Gase would restart the final segment in 17th.
With caution laps into count, the final segment would only be 121 laps. The first half of the final stage was relatively quiet as well, but on lap 178 Gase came over the radio saying that he didn’t quite have the forward drive that he had in the second stage. The team was about 25 laps away from their scheduled green flag pit stop, so he would keep digging until they could make some adjustments. Lap 203 came around and he would bring it to pit road for a fresh set of tires, fuel, and two rounds in of the left rear to help his forward drive. A couple of cautions towards the end of the last stage would cause the race to go into overtime. On the first attempt in overtime the #26 of Max Tullman would wreck in turns 1 & 2 forcing NASCAR to bring out the red flag to clean up the wreckage. After the wreckage was cleared from the track they would get the green flag for the final time. With Gase only able to pick up one more spot at the end, the team decided to hang back to avoid any possible wrecks and take home the 17th place finish.
It was a much needed weekend for Gase and Go Green Racing after a tough month. Next up the team travels to Watkins Glen for the first of four road courses in the 2018 campaign. Gase currently sits 21st in driver points and 22nd in owner points.
Joey Gase PR
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