Catchfence

USARACING PRO CUP SERIES

CLAY ROGERS, No. 16 USG SHEETROCK / BUILDING SPECIALTIES CHEVROLET (SECOND PLACE, POINTS LEADER):

“Well that’s not what we came here to do, run second. We had a very fast car at the beginning of the race, just sat there and rode. And whenever we felt like it was time to go we went up there and took the lead and drove away. I don’t know why we can’t put four tires on this car. Sometimes it just goes to crap. It’s very frustrating. That’s part of it. It’s like rolling the dice every time you come down pit road. The second set there, we knew from scuffing ‘em in practice that they weren’t what we wanted, for whatever reason, we don’t have a reason why. Just proud of this USG team. We fought back.

The last set of tires there the car was pretty good. Jeff had an excellent race car all weekend long. We drove off from everybody there and he was just half a tenth better a lap. We just couldn’t get our car to rotate quite like we needed to down here in one and two. But we gave him a run for his money. They’ve done a lot of hard wor k this year and their team deserves a lot of credit from where they are right now from where they were at the beginning of the season. We’re going to keep doing what we’ve got to do to and go to these last two races and try to wrap up this championship and see if we can’t get a couple more wins.”

DID YOU THINK YOU HAD A CHANCE ON THAT LAST RESTART?

“I knew he was better than we were. The only chance I had was if he slipped up and that chance got taken away when Logan [Ruffin] dive bombed it down in there first corner on the restart. Once we got side-by-side it was game over. He and I got together a little bit. I don’t know if he’s mad at me or what but there’s one little patch of racetrack down there in three and four where the grip is. I had people squeeze me down all day long. As relaxed as the pace was it was amazing the stupidity out of some of the people out there racing today. I mean, you’re sitting there running half-throttle saving your tires and you’ve got idiots running into the side of each other. Pretty disappointing, people that you think that get it that don’t but we’ll come back at Greenville and I know we’ll be good there and see if we can’t get us a win.”

LUCAS RANSONE, No. 00 CASTROL EDGE FORD (THIRD-PLACE):

THAT LAST RESTART MUST HAVE BEEN EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEEDED.

“Our car wasn’t the best, it was a little tight. I just want to thank Castrol for coming on board this race. We tried to give them the winning edge but came up a little bit short. I’ve got to thank all my guys, my crew. They had good stops all day. Hopefully we can get Castrol on board and we’ll be back next year with our guns loaded. It was exciting al l the way to the end. It’s a thinking man’s game ‘cause you have to know when to use the tires, when to get sideways and show your stuff. I had a good day and the car is in one piece. We’ll take that.”

The USAR Pro Cup Series, formerly Hooters Pro Cup, is owned by Interstate Investment Group (IIG) and is based in Concord, N.C. For more information on USARacing, visit www.usarprocup.com.

- Camp & Associates, Inc. Press Release