Climbing the Points
Ladder
(June 11, 2007) - DuBois, PA.
A solid performance Saturday night at Mansfield
Motorsports Park in the Greased Lightning 250 has
added valuable points to Benny Gordon’s quest for
the 2007 Northern Division title. Moving from a tie
in third place 76 point off the lead, to second just
49 points off the leader is an excellent motivator.
Unloading a fast car and leading the early practice
sessions allowed Benny to spend his time tweaking
his Samuel Metals Ford Fusion looking for that extra
tenth of speed. At the conclusion of practice, Benny
equaled the fastest practice lap time of the day at
16.427 on the half mile track.
“The Samuel Metals Ford was fast right out of the
hauler which gave us time to spend testing different
shock and spring combinations. |
 The team's qualifying efforts rewarded
Benny with his 15th pole award.
Kathy Bond/USAR ProCup |
When the car is that fast you have to find the balance between the
speed and consistency,” said Benny. “I felt we had a legitimate shot
at the pole and the race after practice.”
Benny’s first qualifying lap placed him seventh in the line up. On
the second lap he shaved a little more than a tenth off his first
lap time to put his Samuel Metal, Johnny’s Suzuki, Predator
Performance, ADG, Murray’s Freightliner Ford on the pole for the
first time this year.
On the first race lap rookie Brian Scott in the outside pole
position jumped the start taking Clay Rodgers with him and Benny
fell into third. On the next restart, Scott jumped the start again
and was black flagged. It took 21 laps for the 66N to come in and
Benny was able to take the lead. Lap 39 proved to be disappointing
when racing with the 93N of Brandon Ward. Coming out of turn 3 and 4
the two cars got together sending Ward in to a spin bringing out the
caution flag. “I did not want that to happen”, said Benny. “We were
racing side by side in the turn and the car pushed up just a bit and
he came down just a bit and it was enough to turn him around.” Benny
was sent to the end of the longest line for the restart after
leading all of the front runners into the pits for tires and fuel.
“I knew I had to be patient with working my way back to the front if
I wanted a chance to win this race,” said Benny. “We had fresh tires
and fuel but we had 210 laps to go and a lot of cars to pass to get
there.”
The route to the front was long and made more difficult with the
cautions that seemed to come out every 10 laps or so. “I would get
in a rhythm and start passing the lap down cars and almost
immediately after getting around the last one the yellow was flying
again and I had to start the process all over again.” said Benny.
The race was slowed 13 times for a total of 94 caution laps.
Working his way to the front took a lot out of the tires and by the
time Benny reached the top 10 his right front was just about gone.
“I hoped we could come back in to get the first set of tires back on
the car for the last 50 or so laps” said Benny. “There we just too
many cars left on the lead lap and too many lap down cars to try to
work around. I had to hold on and do the best that I could with what
I had. Finishing in fifth was a good points night for us but not
what I was looking for, the car was better than that.”
Next stop for Benny Gordon and his North South Motorsports team will
be back to a track where he has had good success, Myrtle Beach
Speedway June 23rd.
About Samuel
The Samuel Company is a family owned metal processing and
distributing company headquartered in Ontario, Canada with more than
80 facilities located throughout Canada and the United States and
more than 4500 employees. For more information about Samuel,
please visit www.samuel.com.
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