Riding With A Rookie: Chris Bingham
by Chris Bingham-Staff Writer and Busch Series Driver
05/22/2003

Hello Race Fans -

Jay Robinson Racing headed to Nazareth Speedway hoping that both Jason and myself would walk away with solid finishes. I was optimistic going into the weekend after I had a good Indy Light race at Nazareth back in 1997.

For the third race this season, I climbed into the No. 39 Three Stooges Beer Ford. When we unloaded from the truck and got on the track for the first practice, we had a problem with a crossed plug wire. We were able to fix the plug problem, however, then we developed a brake problem. This was the same brake problem that took us out of the previous race in St. Louis I brought the Ford Taurus back to the garage to change the master cylinder.

Once we got the brakes all situated, I returned to practice on the track. I made a five lap run trying to get myself familiar with the track and the car.

We felt that we were not pulling enough RPM’s in the car, so we pulled it behind the wall again and decided to choose a lower gear. We went back out on the track and knocked another second off our time. Our lap times were getting better and better with every lap that we ran.

I went into qualifying thinking that we might have a good shot of getting in the show on time. But with only 15 or so laps in practice I wasn't sure

Heading into the run we didn't know what we had, but we put together a good lap and qualified 34th. I was pretty ecstatic with the run, considering we were lacking a little bit of horsepower and we edged out the 49.

We decided it would be in the best interest of the team if we skipped Happy Hour. We did not want to take any chances of ruining the motor or getting involved in a wreck, if one should have happened. The guys were all smiles after qualifying, so we were looking forward to the green flag on Sunday.

When the race got underway, the car was okay. We were still a little bit tight. We came in at the first opportunity to hit pit road under the caution. The crew made some adjustments to loosen the car just a little bit to see if we could get it handling a little better. The car was really good on new tires, however, the older the tires were getting, the worse the car would start handling. I could really feel the lack of horsepower under the hood when the tires were going away.

We just wanted to stay out of the leaders way as much as possible, contend for the positions that we could and finish the race. We crossed the line 30th, improved our position by four spots and jumped three positions in the owner standings. All in all it was a good weekend.

The series rolls into Lowes Motor Speedway for our event on Saturday. I am excited about heading to the track. I will be back behind the wheel of the No. 49 for the race. Again, Lowes will mark another track where I have no experience, so we want to have a good but clean run this weekend, and there is no reason why that is not possible.

I have to give a big thanks to car owner Jay Robinson and the entire Jay Robinson Racing crew who continues to stand behind me and believe in me.

I'll be back after Lowes, hopefully with some good things to talk about.

Take care,

Chris Bingham

You can reach Chris Bingham at: cbingham@catchfence.com