Frontstretch’s Chase Folsom debriefed with Mason Diaz and Ryan Millington after the CARS Tour LMSC race at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Diaz finished 23rd after having a right rear tire come apart, while Millington was plagued by both engine issues and an incident with Diaz.
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Mason Diaz, unfortunately a strong run for you. Went south just after a late comp yellow. What happened? Uh right around lap 40, just light switch. Car just went really really free. We were picking them off. I mean you started 25th and we got up to about fifth there and right about lap 45 just a light switch. It went free in free off. Couldn’t drive it anywhere. But um overall, thank you these Hedgecock guys. They bring fast cars every week. If last week we qualified pretty good, but if I could figure out what I need to do in qualifying to get better, we’d be up front more often. Um, we get up front towards the later ends of these races. So, we were there needed to be, just got wicked free. Right rear tire started coming apart and just couldn’t hold on to the bottom. I let off early to try to try to anticipate it and it just wasn’t enough. There were a lot of guys that had some tire problems or were caught off guard by the Cub Series rubber being on the track surface. How much did that change the track early on? I didn’t really feel the cup or truck rubber. Like the track just kind of felt the same. Whatever you had yesterday, you had today. If you were free, you were free today. Um, who’s your stuff? Maybe a tire test here would have helped. I mean, we all knew the heat from this weekend was going to be big. We all knew that going from before the race. So, um, really can’t blame Hooser for it. They’re doing everything they can. Um, just sucks. We all went on low air like they told us to and just trying to trying to do it. But I’m just kind of confused why there was a comp caution at the end there when we stated the rules that we only had a 25 lap break and that was it. So had all of a sudden do we get another caution? Um I’m not saying that’s the reason why we’re out of the race. I mean my fault I got loose going in the corner but we could have just rode out the last 20 laps in what 3 minutes three laps a minute so race would have been done in five minutes give or take. So instead we have a bunch of cars wadded up. On a more positive note, what does it mean to you to be able to take all the partners that are supporting you and put them in front of a national audience and run up front? Oh, it’s big. Um, got to thank the Sign Shot, Prince William Marina, um, Hedgecock Racing Enterprises. Um, just everyone’s behind me, my girlfriend, um, my family. It’s a pretty pretty cool deal to be on FS1. It’s not my first time being FS1, but first stocking. It’s it’s a really big deal. Um kind of a interesting schedule for us here, but uh we made it work and it it turned out being all right, but uh thank you Carore for getting us on there. Uh hopefully hopefully we’ll be back next year. When are you going to be back with us in the car store? Uh I’m not sure. I think the next two races are on top of our national motor park races and I take I run that facility down there with my family. So um whenever we’re off there, we’ll be back. I know. I know. Right now my next one is going to be Hickory as of right now, but there might be one before then. Ryan Millington, strong run for you tonight. Went south around the mid portion of the race. What happened? Well, we finished uh P Jeff Gordon on FS1 at Wilsboro tonight. Came home 24th. We uh qualified 19th, then made a ton of ground up really early. I think we got up to sixth or seventh by lap 40 or so. And uh had a pretty dang good car. Motor kind of started to go south again. I don’t know what’s going on with that. We had some problems at the end of ACE and we changed a carburetor because we thought we had a carburetor issue and it started doing the same thing, missing the same way it was at the end of ace tonight. So, that started to go south and then we got in a little incident there with the 12 and 41 Diaz and Schaefer. I don’t think there’s really much anybody could have done there to avoid it. Just kind of racing at Wilsboro. You know, everything goes by so quick and ain’t much reaction time to do much. So, uh we got tore up and just decided to park it. You know, we weren’t in the points or nothing. There’s no real reason for us to go back out there and try to pick up a couple more spots I didn’t feel like. So, just uh build her up, go back to the shop, get her fixed up, and go to Langley in a couple weeks and try to get something done there. Talked to Diaz and he said he lost a right rear going into one and tried to back it up. There was just nothing he could do. Is there anything you could have done to avoid it? I mean really the only thing that would have been able to avoid it is oh boy on the inside of me the 12 I think it was he’d kind of gone to throw it three wide or pass me really low and that bobble happened a row or two in front of us. It just all all happened real quick. Everybody came together and just there was that incident. But I don’t think really anybody was really at fault, you know, just racing. How much different was the track surface, especially at the beginning of the night when it had all the Cup Series rubber on it? Surprisingly, I didn’t think it was much different. I mean, we were kind of snug all day yesterday and and we were snug all day today in the race. As the race went on, it definitely tightened up as the rubber laid down, which is no surprise, you know, that’s about what every track does. We go to um overall we were just too tight tonight. We uh I figured we would be we missed it a little bit, but that’s the same way we went last year and same we went this year. So hopefully we can’t uh write that down on the notebook and try to come back better for next year. This is kind of a home game for you guys, you know, just just down the road down the back roads in Idard County. What’s it like for you to come to one of your home racetracks now and be on Fox Sports One with all your partners on the car? Oh, it’s awesome for sure. You know, for us to come out here and be able to have this series highlighted on such a big platform is uh it’s a great deal and uh you know, hopefully everything worked out great for them tonight and uh hopefully we can do it again next year. You know, it’d be great to get two or three of these races televised each year. You know, some of the bigger ones, not the whole series, but definitely some of the bigger ones um be really great to get on TV and uh we put on a good show a lot of places. So hopefully we can make something happen and for next year it’ be great. I’m Caleb Barnes with frontstretch.com. Come back soon for more great racing videos. And if you like us, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button.
1 Comment
Good race!