Catchfence

New Bremen, NY (August 2, 2009): Brett Moffitt got a quick lesson in the ups and downs that short track racing can be infamous for at Adirondack International Speedway Saturday night.

The 16-year-old Andy Santerre Motorsports driver overcame a mechanical issue in practice Saturday afternoon, recovered to qualify his No. 44 Chevrolet second fastest, led the NASCAR Camping World Series East’s Edge Hotel 150, but was relegated to an eighth place finish in the closing laps of the event.

The top-10 finish was his sixth of the season in only eight starts.

“He’s a little dejected right now,” said Andy Santerre after the race. “He did a good job. He was patient, but there were so many cars that were so even. The top seven or eight cars were under a blanket.”

The team only got a couple of laps of practice in on the first afternoon session after they were forced to contend with a mechanical issue that mirrored that of the one they had at Thompson International Speedway. Santerre discovered it was an issue with the distributor cap and the team went to work on getting it fixed. By the second practice session, Moffitt was back in his groove and back on top of the speed charts. He qualified second fastest in time trials and was confident for a solid run in the feature event.

“We tried plugs and wires. We had the same problem at Thompson and we took the engine to our engine guy and he had told us it was a spark plug. We fixed it and tried it out at the shop and everything was fine. We got the car here and it wouldn’t run,” explained Santerre. “We tried a bunch of stuff trying to find out what it was so that hurt us.”

At the drop of the green, Moffitt, starting from the outside groove, lost his position to Matt Kobyluck. He settled into third and the trio pulled away from the rest of the field by two seconds.

Just prior to the halfway mark, Kobyluck made a mistake that Moffitt capitalized on. Kobyluck went a little high giving the 16 year old the opportunity to take the bottom groove and drive by for second.

Moffitt closed in on then-leader Eddie MacDonald and rode his bumper for the next several laps. At lap 80, MacDonald got a little high and Moffitt challenged on the inside. MacDonald wasn’t about to give up easily and the two went side-by-side with Moffitt just up to his door. It was lapped traffic, however, that forced Moffitt to back off on the challenge.

Caution flew at lap 88 and put Moffitt side-by-side with MacDonald for the restart at lap 93. Moffitt beat him to the line and officially led the lap, but fell back to fourth before the field reached turn one.

“I left them too much room going into turn one,” said Moffitt. “I was up in the rubber and the car wouldn’t turn.”

Moffitt settled into fifth by lap 96, and took fourth away from Kobyluck just before a caution at lap 125. Moffitt would be on the outside for the restart once again. When they went back to green at lap 131, Moffitt dropped back further in the field.

“We got shuffled to the back. If you get out of the groove by a foot you are done,” Moffitt said.

Moffitt was eighth for the final restart with five laps remaining – exactly where he took the checkers.

Andy Santerre Motorsports will return to action in two weeks at Lime Rock Park. Moffitt is currently sixth in the NASCAR Camping World Series East point standings.

For more information on Brett Moffitt or Andy Santerre Motorsports, visit www.brettmoffitt.com or www.andysanterremotorsports.com.

- Andy Santerre Motorsports Press Release