West Coast NASCAR Race Shows Potential for Curran and Whelen Team
- another last-to-first attempt -
June 20, 2009
Sonoma, Calif
The Whelen Engineering / ArmorCoat hauler headed cross-country for the team’s first NASCAR Camping World West series road race. Just like their Camping World East road race a couple weeks ago at Watkins Glen, NY, this event, at Infineon Raceway near San Francisco, showed more promise for the future than the results indicated.
Team leader Eric Curran had a tough weekend finishing 24th after qualifying a poor 18th.
“This is my third NASCAR race,” Eric said, “and the third time I’ve had to start last for one reason or another. That’s a handicap anywhere, but especially so in a 40-car field on a 1.99-mile road course.”
Last-to-first, and not finishing in second NASCAR start;
The color yellow now high on Curran’s ‘dislike” list
Watch this Watkins Glen Camping World race at 3pm ET on
Speed TV.
June 16, 2009
Watkins Glen, NY
The strategy was flawless –
expect a full-course-yellow situation at a point where Eric Curran could be
brought into the pits for his single refueling of the race, then speed to the
checkered flag while teams that pitted earlier had to pit a second time for
fuel because they pitted too early.
“The first ‘yellow’ was on
lap seven of 54 laps in the race, and as we expected, almost everybody pitted,”
Curran said. “The third one was on lap 21, so that’s when my team brought me
in. With maybe one more yellow, or two at the most, we should have been good to
the finish and hopefully in the top three.”
However, that’s not the way
the day worked out in the NASCAR Camping World East Series road race at Watkins
Glen International – a track where Eric has raced and won many times over the
past nine years.
Eric Curran did his best to perform a unique “three-peat” in SCCA SPEED World Challenge GT series racing at Mosport Park, but a fifth place in his #30 Whelen Engineering Corvette was as good as it would get this year. “Winning at Mosport three years in a row would have been great but didn’t happen this year,” he said.
“Now that we’re four races into the season, SCCA Pro Racing’s officials have made changes to the specifications for some cars to make them faster, and they’ve slowed other cars,” Curran said.
Following
this afternoon's SCCA World Challenge GT race, Eric Curran quickly
changed driving suits and hustled over to the Grand-Am KONI Challenge
Series paddock where one of the three Compass360 Racing Honda Civic Si
cars was waiting for him.
Eric Curran held the
Driver's Championship lead going into the SCCA SPEED World Challenge GT
series race at New Jersey Motorsports Park with his #30 Whelen
Engineering Corvette.
Things went downhill throughout the weekend.
Eric
started the race sixth fastest after having a small issue in qualifying
on the 2.25-mile New Jersey circuit. As the cars were getting lined up
for the pre-griding of the race, the Whelen Corvette had a dead
battery, forcing Eric to start from pit lane, rather that the 6th place
starting position he'd earned.
As the race started, Eric
quickly moved forward, and by lap two, he had moved to seventh place,
got back to his qualifying position by lap three, and passed the
Corvette of Tony Gaples on lap four to take fifth place.
June 20, 2009
Eric Curran did his best to perform a unique “three-peat” in SCCA SPEED World Challenge GT series racing at Mosport Park, but a fifth place in his #30 Whelen Engineering Corvette was as good as it would get this year. “Winning at Mosport three years in a row would have been great but didn’t happen this year,” he said.
