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2006
Champions
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PFLUGER SCORES SECOND ASA SPEED TRUCK WIN OF THE
YEAR AT THE ORANGE SHOW
BY DAVE GRAYSON
The ASA-Go Fast-Speed Truck Challenge Series
paid a July 14th visit to the Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino.
When the checkers flew at the conclusion of the 75 lap feature Victor
Pfluger parked his #80 Parker Farms/Copperstate Tire Dodge in victory
lane for the second time this season. He also put a little padding on
his series points lead which was only one point ahead of defending champion
Darren Young going into this race. Some of that padding came from a
five point bonus for setting the fast in qualifying. Pfluger toured
the Orange Show Speedway's quarter mile oval with a time of 14.043 seconds.
A pre race roll of the dice inverted the field by three positions and
that put Scott Franchimone and Young on the front row for the feature.
Once under green flag racing conditions the cream of the ASA Speed Truck
Challenge Series quickly rose to the top. By lap six the running order
was Franchimone, Young, Pfluger, Randel King and Bear Rzesnowiecky.
All five trucks were glued to each other's bumpers like a high speed
freight train.
But that high speed freight train completely derailed on lap 42. Sensing
it was go time Young began putting a lot of pressure on Franchimone.
Coming off of turn two there was some contact and both trucks bounced
off of the backstretch wall. A quick thinking Pfluger dived to the bottom
of the track to avoid the incident and to take the lead. Pfluger's reaction
time would turn out to be the winning move of the race.Making lap 42
even more bizarre was the fact that United Racing teammates Young and
Rzesnowiecky managed to hit each other coming out of turn three. Both
trucks were sent to the rear of the field.
On the restart Pfluger took advantage of the clean air in front of his
Dodge and quickly ran away from the field with King doing everything
he could to catch him. Pfluger's truck was riding on rails and soon
held a half lap lead over his competition. But that lead evaporated
with four laps left in the event. Tim Allen's truck spun in turn four
to bring out the second and final yellow flag of the race. With another
great restart Pfluger made quick work of the remaining laps and parked
his Dodge in victory lane. Randel King and Andy Allen followed him across
the line. Darren Young and Bear Rzesnowiecky made quick work of charging
through the field to complete the top five.
After the race Pfluger commented on the lap 42 incident that put him
into the lead and said "I couldn't believe it. It was really hard
racing between Scott Franchimone and Darren Young. I not sure who did
what but they both started going up the race track and I had a big enough
hole for the truck to squeeze through so we could move to the front
and we just rode with it from there. Our truck was built for us to run
out front this weekend but the dice inversion before the race put us
back to third. When were back in traffic I couldn't quite drive my line
while trying to keep up with everybody else. But when that Parker Farms
Dodge got into clean air it just took off like a rocket ship."
Commenting on the extra points that he picked up on Darren Young in
the championship race Pfluger said "I hate to see anybody have
a bad night especially when we're all fighting for a championship. I
would have rather raced Darren for that win but I'm sure there will
be more to race with him for and having a more comfortable points lead
isn't something I'm going to disagree with."
Randel King was happy with his second place finish and said "we
had an awesome truck tonight and I've got to thank my team. We were
really strong in the beginning and definitely there. Right before that
first caution came out about halfway through the race we broke a drive
plate in the rear end. That made it hard to hang onto to the truck towards
the end because it would try to snap loose in the center of the corner.
I still think we could have pulled off a strong win at the end of the
race but it was overall a good run for the Hype Manufacturing/Caly Andrews
Racing Chevy Colorado."
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