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West Coast NASCAR Race Shows Potential for Curran and Whelen Team |
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- 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.”
At Lime Rock Park last summer, qualifying was rained out. So, Eric, as a rookie to the CWE series, took the green flag with the rest of the field ahead of him and still managed a 6th place finish. At Watkins Glen two weeks ago, he and team owner Sonny Whelen missed the drivers’ meeting. At Infineon an engine change forced Eric to give up a poor but better 18th spot on the grid.
“I felt bad for that,” he said, “because Teddy Marsh and the Whelen guys rushed to borrow an engine from another team and had it installed in the 90-minute window between practice and qualifying, but didn’t get the timing set correctly and the car was way down on power but rules are rules. You still have to qualify if you replace a motor throughout the weekend, but you start at the back”
On the race’s fifth lap, the new engine developed a sputter. “A spark plug wire had fallen off,” Eric said, “and by the time I got back on track, I was a lap down.”
Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how they affect you, just like at Watkins Glen, the yellow caution flags flew frequently and for long times, definitely altering how the race results read.
“The first full-course yellows were on laps 14-15, and that enabled me to use NASCAR’s ‘lucky dog’ rule and get back on the tail end of the lead lap,” he said.
 And they kept flying, allowing the field to bunch-up each time, but using valuable time during which real racing could have happened and Eric could have been gaining more spots. In all, there were eight caution sessions, totaling 17 laps.
“I needed more green flag laps to gain spots. In NASCAR if you pass cars after a green flag restart and the field doesn’t complete a full lap, they revert back to the previous lap. It was frustrating having to pass some of the same cars over and over. After a few attempts drivers were getting smart to my passing maneuvers. But the green flap laps still helped me get all the way up to 8th place, and things were looking good, despite all the banging around you’d expect with 40 heavy cars like that on a road course.
“Then it got interesting,” he said.
“The race finish was just a few laps away, everybody rubbing and pushing for any extra position they could get, cars sliding all around – and I got shoved off the track in Turn 4.
“The good news was I was able to get back on the track and not lose any positions, but with only five turns left between me and the green flag and a top 10 finish, my right front tire blew from the wheel getting hit a few too many times. Ugh!!”
The final results say Eric finished 24th in the Whelen Chevrolet Monte Carlo, while Eric’s teammate Brandon Davis qualified well but finished 35th in the team’s Chevrolet Monte Carlo, which dropped from the race on the 36th lap with transmission problems.
“NASCAR racing is the most intense competitive racing I’ve ever done,” Eric said. “Big competitive fields with lots of action makes its tough to do well. I would have been really happy with a top 10 finish after the tough weekend we had. Oh, well. We’ll try again next time.”
Eric’s next race is back at Watkins Glen, NY, the SCCA World Challenge GT race on July 2 – 4, but this time in familiar confines of the #30 Whelen Engineering Chevrolet Corvette, and this time on the 3.7-mile “long course.”
“We’re going to take the circle track version of the Monte Carlo to Thompson, Conn., the weekend after that for a race on the oval track there,” Eric said. “I’ve never raced on an oval so this will be yet another new experience. Teddy Marsh and the crew have worked hard on these cars, especially the new one I’ve been driving, and they deserve some positive results.”
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