DARREN YOUNG DOMINATES ASA SPEED TRUCK ACTION AT FIREBIRD INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY

Source: DaveGrayson
Date: 05/06/2007

Darren Young totally dominated the May 5th ASA-Go Fast- Speed Truck Challenge Series race at the Firebird International Raceway in Chandler-Arizona. The Gilbert-Arizona driver passed Victor Pfluger on the third lap of the race, that was actually ran under a 40 minute time limit, and never looked back. The driver of the #18 United Nissan-Sudden Impact-Quaker State Chevrolet had a race truck that was the class of the field from the moment it rolled out of its hauler. The win was the first of the 2007 season for the two time, and reigning, series champion. He began his excellent afternoon by setting fast time in qualifying which rewarded him with a bonus of five championship points. Young toured the 1.6 mile road course and turned in a qualifying lap of 1:05:834 which calculated to 86.20 MPH.

A six place pre race invert had Young actually starting the race on the outside of row three. That invert placed Scott Franchimone and Jim Putman on the front row who led the 19 starters under the initial green flag. As the field roared into turn one there was some contact and Franchimone wounded up spinning around which bottled up the field. When the dust was settled Pfluger emerged as the initial race leader with Young right on his tailgate. However, Young's truck was extremely well set up and he was able to hug the low line of the turns like he was riding on rails.

By the halfway point of the race Young was starting to pull away from the field. Unfortunately that lead evaporated on lap 13 when the only full course yellow presented itself. That yellow flag came after the engine in Sean Dickerson's Chevrolet expired and his truck was stranded on the front straightaway. The fact that the truck was stranded in a dangerous location that would require being towed away forced officials to present the full course caution. After four laps under caution, the green flag emerged again and Young got an excellent restart and soon started pulling away from the field again.

The 40 minute time limit ran out, after 32 laps were completed, and Young roared underneath the checkers with Pfluger a few truck lengths behind him. Bear Rzesnowiecky, Young's teammate, finished third, Autsin Murphy was fourth and Andy Allen did an impressive road course job to earn his first top five finish of the season.

In victory lane the happy winner said "this whole United Nissan team did a fantastic job especially in the prep work and I attribute that to our win today. When we rolled out of the hauler we were fast right off the bat and without that I don't think that we would have had the head start that we did throughout the whole weekend. It was fantastic and one of the really neat things about it was the fact that we had an option regarding our tires. We could run either all left sides or all right sides so the compounds were all different. It was kind of a crap shoot on whether to run a soft or hard compound. We decided to gamble and run the soft compound and it worked out for us.I figured that if we could get a big enough lead out there then we could take it easy during the final laps of the race. That one full course yellow flag bunched us up but, then again, it gave me a chance to let the tires cool off which allowed us to get back at it again."

After the race Victor Pfluger was all smiles and said "we really had a good day. The truck was really hooked although we didn't qualify where we wanted to. But everything's all good. The new motor that we put in for the race really pulled strong and we ended up with a second place finish which will help out our points lead and, hopefully, we can keep up this pace for the rest of the year. " Pfluger was doing double duty on this day at the Firebird International Raceway. He was driving a Chevrolet Late Model Car in the ASA Autopro Series. He was racing for the lead, in the final laps of the Blue Division event, when he suffered a left front tire that ended his race a little early.

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