USAR Hooters Pro Cup Southern Division rookie Mike Mason continued his string of impressive performances rolling to an 11th-place finish in the South Georgia 250 stock car race at South Georgia Motorsports Park Saturday.
“We had a really good race car tonight, especially on old tires,” said Mason. “I just can’t say enough about the job my crew chief, Mark Huff, and everyone else on the team is doing. I had never been to this track before and we were pretty fast right off the truck. These guys know what it takes to give me a good piece and my cars have been great. I’m just trying to bring them back in one piece.”
Mason, in just his third career Pro Cup start, was eighth in the rundown after practice immaculate South Georgia half-mile oval located just outside of Valdosta and had hopes of equaling his sixth-place qualifying effort in the season-opening event at Lakeland two weeks ago.
A slip off Turn 2 in his first lap of qualifying ditched hopes of another Top-10 staring spot, but Mason recovered on his second lap to post a 19.168-second effort – good enough for 17th in the 36-car starting field.
“We made some changes to the car prior to qualifying and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on that first lap,” said Mason. “The car was a little looser than I anticipated, but we recovered to get solidly in the show. It was disappointing not to start higher, but we knew we had a lot better car than that.”
Mason’s No. 75 Watkins Engine Development Ford Taurus quickly worked it’s way into the Top-15 and then settled in for a long night’s work that included driving through a number of wrecks -the closest of those being Brett Butler’s spin in Turn 2 on Lap 78 and a multi-car tangle in Turn 4 on the 112th circuit.
“I thought for sure I was going to collect Brett,” said Mason. “He was rolling up the track and nearly pinched me up into the wall. In the Turn 4 wreck, they all just stacked up in front of me. I got slowed down pretty good, dropped the car into neutral and just coasted through. As soon I was clear, I dropped it into gear and got the heck out of there.”
Mason had another adventure when he and the rest of the leaders came to pit road for their first stop of the evening. His pit stall blocked by two other competitors, Mason partially angled into his pit and was only able to take gas only on his stop.
“I’m not sure what happened there,” said Mason. “I got to my stall and there was no place to go. We dumped gas even though we were only partially in our box. I was a little afraid we would get penalized for that, but the Hooters Cup officials did a good job of assessing what happened. It all got a little crazy there for a minute or two.”
On the restart, Mason held his own on old tires staying with the lead pack of 15 cars. A second stop later in the race for fuel and fresh rubber put Mason 18th in the running order.
From there, Mason drove his way up to 11th, just missing his first Pro Cup Top-10 finish and equaling the career-best 11th he scored in his USAR Hooters Cup debut at Lakeland last September.
Joey Logano won the event on a green-white-checkered flag finish over Shane Wallace, Benny Gordon, Chase Pistone and Shelby Howard. Logano’s winning speed was slowed to just 92.583 miles per hour thanks to the 17 caution flags totaling 107 of the 259 laps.
In his three career USAR Hooters Cup starts, Mason - an 18-year-old Bakersfield, CA driver - has completed 758 of the 759 laps contested and has averaged a 12th-place finish.
“We feel like we won Saturday night,” said Mason. “Our goal at each one of these early season events is to get quality experience, complete all the laps we possibly can, and bring the car home in one piece. We did that again tonight, all 259 laps. That’s awesome, I learned a lot out there. This was only my third time racing these kinds of cars and I never raced at this track before tonight. I’m feeling much more comfortable in the car and I’ve been meeting and learning to race the other drivers in the series. This was another step forward for our race team this weekend. We accomplished every goal we set out for ourselves. That’s as good as a win right now for us.”
This past weekend’s South Georgia 250 will be televised on a taped-delayed basis this week at 5 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday and again at Noon Eastern on Friday on The SPEED Channel.
Mason will now take a week off before returning to USAR Hooters Pro Cup action on Saturday, March 25 at Montgomery (AL) Motor Speedway. The 250-lap on the semi-banked, half-mile oval will take the green flag at 7:30 p.m.
For more information about corporate media and marketing opportunities with Mike Mason and Mason Motorsports for the 2006 USAR Hooters Pro Cup season, please contact John Close at closefinshes@aol.com or call 704-236-9986.
