daytona
QUALIFYING:
Tipton's Race Recap: "A nice solid start to the season. In the new head-to-head team standings, we got our first W for the season against Yellow Stripe Racing. We managed to get three top ten finishes with Latham in 5th, McEvoy in 6th, and Herman starting his first season with the team finishing a solid 9th. Team Capt. Mike Politis got caught up avoiding a wreck on lap 30 and could never get the help he needed in the form of a caution to get back in the mix. After a blown motor retired him for the night, Rob Norfleet finished in 36th position. I have faith in all of them returning strong next week at Nashville. Great start team!!!"
No 5 - Timothy Latham
"Great start to the season. Led a bunch of laps. Just got caught up in an incident early on and never got a caution to catch us back up. I'll take a P5 at Daytona with 0 incidents! I usually get caught up in wrecks at these places. Great run by the team. Differing strategies just led to different results at the end. Hopefully we can have a repeat of Nashville next week and Brian, Brad and I can get a top 5! Maybe we can get Mike and Rob to sweep the top 5 too. Looking forward to a great season!"
No 6 - Michael Politis
"I'm glad we got the first race of the season out of the way, my race was uneventful and fell behind on lap 30 trying to avoid an incident. Besides Rob getting a speeding penalty the rest of the team recovered really well. Couldn't be happier for the boys Brian, Tim and our new addition Brad secured a win for the team. Hoping to have a better run at Nashville next week!"
No 79 - Brian McEvoy
"Great way to kick off the new season. Focus coming into this race was to simply survive and finish the race. Qualified in 26th which was fine considering I was wanting to be in the back and stay out of trouble early in the race. Race started and did just that. Ran about 25th a good chunk of the first stint until a caution on lap 14. Took left side tires and gas on the caution and again restarted in about 20th place. Again, just focused on staying out of trouble. On lap 30 there was a wreck in front of me that did not bring out a caution but scattered the field. I was able to navigate through the cars involved and keep going. I caught up to teammate and reigning champ Timothy Latham #5 and proceed to do my best to push him the rest of the race. We lost the top 5 cars in the wreck and continued to push running 6th and 7th. We pitted for a splash of gas with 5 to go. On the last lap one of the top 5 cars ran out of fuel and we were able to catch and pass him which moved Tim and I up to 5th and 6th. Overall great run to kick off the season. Happy to be able to help Tim get a top 5 to kick of the year. Also, great run for new teammate Brad Herman#85 bringing it home P9. Thanks to GearUp, Franklin Motorsports and Latham-Grafix for their support. Thanks to our eye in the sky Tipp for keeping us clean through the wrecks. Excited for Nashville next week.
No 85 - Brad Herman
"Started tail end on the field (P.36) after barely making the race, decided to ride around and miss the wreck but it never happened and had to play catch up the whole night to be able to help my teammates, stayed in the 2nd pack the whole night and through good pit entry and exit ended up breaking into the top 10 in the last 2 laps and finished 9th, happy to walk away with good points and onto Nashville where we had a strong finish last year and should have won. Happy to be a part of GearUp and what they represent and bring to the table as a team!!"