Catchfence

USA RACING PRO CUP SERIES NOTES AND QUOTES

FOR THE STRUTMASTERS.COM 300 QUALIFYING

AT SOUTH BOSTON SPEEDWAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2010.

Caleb Holman won Saturday’s Strutmasters.com 300, crossing the finish line 2.634 second ahead of second-place Stephen Nasse.

NOTES:

- Holman scored his FOURTH win of the 2010 season and his FIFTH in 58 USA Racing Pro Cup Series starts. He claimed his seventh top-five and ninth top-10 in 2010.

- Unofficially Holman placed second in the series championship standings, 49 points behind champion Clay Rogers.

- Holman led three times for a race-high 235 laps in today’s 300-lap event. He led 663 laps in 14 races this season and has led 1,402 in his career.

- Holman won the pole and collected a $2,000 bonus as part of the WIX Filters Challenge.

- A native of Abingdon, Va., Holman won for the first time in three starts at South Boston Speedway and scored his first top five.

- Stephen Nasse scored his best finish in 12 career USA Racing Pro Cup Series starts and grabbed his third top-five of the season.

STEPHEN NASSE, No. 51 ALL AMERICAN CONCRETE FORD:

“The 75 has just a great racecar and I just didn’t have enough to keep up with him. We’ve had a lot of bad luck this season and this is a good turnaround for us. Second-place isn’t bad and I’ll take that any day. It’s better than being wrecked and in the fence like we were last time. It feels great to have this. This is my best finish so far. I’m definitely happy with this finish.”

CALEB HOLMAN, No. 75 FOOD COUNTRY USA / AARINGTON ENGINES DODGE:

“It was really good for maybe 50 laps. Over 50 laps that one time seemed to hurt us and we could really make it fire on a restart. We could make it go and we got a really good restart that last time there and a lapped car got between ‘em. I didn’t want to get too good of a restart because if I do second-place gets by the lapped car, too. We weren’t really wanting to do that. That worked out really, really good.”

HOW BIG IS THIS WIN FOR YOU?

“It’s always a big deal to win the last race of the year because those bragging rights last all winter. You can go all winter and just keep thinking about that win. Those long, cold days in the shop you can think about that last sunny day you had at the racetrack.”

YOU BEAT CLAY ROGERS TODAY. HOW IMPORTANT IS THAT GOING INTO 2011?

“It solidified that we were at least number two. I think us and [Jeff] Agnew and him were the top cars. We beat him straight-up at New Smyrna and he’s just whipped us ever since. And this is his [Rogers 1st place] kind of racetrack. New Smyrna was definitely our forte so to come here and do it is definitely a big deal for our race team.”

COMMENT ON THE LATE PIT STOP THAT KEPT YOU OUT FRONT.

“The boys did a heck of a job. They’ve been doing that all year. They’re out practicing a couple times a week.”

ON HIS PIT SELECTION.

“We got the pole and got the first pit stall and we just have to pull out to get gone and what was really funny about that was they were going ‘Go, go and go hard’ and I’m like this is all I’ve got. I’m second gear wide open and nothing happening. It just seemed like I was sitting still. Before the race I dumped the water out of my coolshirt cooler across pit road. The crew chief fussed at me and I was like it’s not a big deal. He said ‘You know what you’re slipping in? The water you dumped out [smiles]. But it worked out okay. Pit stop selection was big, pit stops were big. My guys have done that all year.”

COMMENT ON THE THREE-WIDE PASS BY CLAY ROGERS AROUND YOU AND LAPPED CAR.

“It’s a battle of wills, too. It’s easy t o get discouraged when something like that happens. In a 300-lap race you think you can coast around a little while and bide your time. You used to be able to do that. These tires are so good as far as holding up, they don’t wear out. I was going as hard as I could go for 300 laps, just as hard as I could go. If you could save your tires and do that kind of thing it’d be a little different story. But it’s tough when that happens and you sitting here thinking ‘Man we’ve got the best car and this guy just passed us’ but we got back again on pit road. The gas stop got us back out again. It goes back to the pit crew again.&nbs p; They’re awesome. I kind of felt like our car dropped off after about 50 laps. If we had a long run continuously it would hurt us but then we’d slow down, the tires would cool off and we’d fire back. It would go again. If we just had to go straight up, no cautions, about 50 laps we fell off and that’s why Clay was able to catch us there to get by us in lapped traffic. If I’d have been by myself it wouldn’t be no issue.

I didn’t want to see that last caution ‘cause we had a nice lead and we were pretty much holding our own but then I knew we could go. These cars do weird things on a restart. When you ride around under caution a few laps, mayb e leave the brake fans on, just the littlest thing affects ‘em. You go over in that corner and it don’t do the same thing that’s been expecting all and ours did that. Ours did the right stuff on the restarts. As quick as they threw the green we could go and that restart worked out real well getting the lapped car between us.”

YOU DID ALL YOU COULD TODAY TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP.

“We lost the points at Bristol, the second race of the championship series. We should have won that race, had the same deal we did here with leading the most laps. We blew a tire with like 40 laps to go. The way I figured it up is Clay had to beat us by 64 points to erase what happened to us at Bristol. That’s not saying they don’t deserve it if they didn’t but in my mind 64 points is what we lost at Bristol. He [Rogers] didn’t have any bad luck and that’s kudos to them ‘cause they did all the things right. The tire thing was just a luck issue. It wasn’t anything that we could’ve done or not done. It doesn’t bother me so bad knowing we did all we could do.”

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