When you’re disappointed with a 12th-place finish, you know things are going in the right direction.
Mike Mason was just that after the latest USAR Hooters Pro Cup Southern Division Saturday night after a caution-filled 250-lap battle at Montgomery (AL) Motor Speedway.
After his second Top-10 qualifying effort in three Southern Division races this season, Mason was denied his first Top-10 finish at Montgomery.
“We had it right there in front of us,” said Mason. “We ran a really smart race. We just had some problems at the end, especially in the last couple of laps, that took that finish away from us.”
Mason again served notice that he is one of the top young drivers in the Pro Cup division by holding the top spot in qualifying for a long time on the strength of a 20.695-second lap on the Montgomery half-mile oval. He would eventually fall to ninth in the 34-car starting grid, his best qualifying effort since a sixth in the season-opening race at Lakeland and the top time of any rookie in the Montgomery race.
“That was four-tenths quicker than anything we ran in practice,” said Mason. “My car was awesome. Mark Huff and my team seem to know exactly what the car needs for qualifying.”
At the drop of the green, Mason was content to run in the Top-15, playing a tire-saving strategy game on the abrasive Montgomery track surface and staying out of the six incidents that slowed the race for caution in the early going.
Pitting ahead of the leaders for fuel and tires on Lap 69, Mason cycled into the Top-5 by the 100-lap mark. Unfortunately, that advantage went away when Mason had to all but stop on the racetrack to miss the spinning car of Clay Rogers a couple of laps later.
“I could hardly see Clay in all the smoke and we had slid up the racetrack,” said Mason. “I was really afraid Clay was going to pinch the both of us up into the wall, but saved it and I was able to stop.”
Now again at the back of the lead-lap car pack after a quick pit stop to assess any damage, Mason went back into cruise control saving his equipment for the end of the race. He also did his best to miss all the wrecks, including driving through a wild, hard crash on the front straight involving Dana White and Wayne Willard that forced the race to be red-flagged with just over 30 laps to go.
By then, Mason had wheeled back through the field to sixth and was looking to score his first-ever Top-10 USAR Hooters Pro Cup finish.
“I know everyone on the team was thinking the same thing during that red flag,” said Mason. “We were going to break through. It’s only our fourth race, three this year, and we were showing everyone that could stay out of trouble, race clean and compete in the Top-10. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way.”
Mason dropped a spot on the restart and later fell to the eighth position when Chase Pistone muscled his way by entering Turn 1.
“I don’t know what Chase was thinking,” said Mason. “My spotter told me he was under me and I gave him plenty of room. We came up on a lapped car and he should have slowed up and fallen in behind me. Instead, he just drove up the track and into my door to shove me out of the way. I didn’t appreciate that too much.”
With the end of the race and Top-10 in sight, Bobby Jo Woodley’s spin slowed the event for a green, white, checkered-flag finish. On the first lap after the restart, C.E. Falk made contact with the back of Mason’s car spinning it into a wild, 360-degree, smoke-filled loop where it was collected by the car of Brian Glaze. The impact left Mason’s car with a significant left side body damage.
“There was just no reason for that,” said Mason of the indcident with Falk. “He wasn’t under me at all. He hit me square and then stayed in the gas. You can’t drive the car on the front wheels only. He was into me so hard and stayed in the gas so long that he lifted my back tires off the ground. He never backed out, he just dumped me.”
The spin, along with another incident further down the track, again brought out the yellow flag. On the final green, white, checkered attempt, Mason somehow managed to still finish 12th despite running on the flat left-front tire the last lap of the race.
“It was very disappointing to finish the race that way,” said Mason. “We raced the race track all night and gave everybody tons of room. We hardly touched any other cars all night. We had a little bump with Jody Lavender and he came down to say he was sorry after the race. I’m not sure it was even his fault, but he came down to say he was sorry anyway.
"But those two deals at the end, the one with Chase and the one with C.E. – those weren’t right," Mason continued. "We’ve proven we don’t race that way. We’re here to qualify, run good, and respect the other drivers. I might be a rookie, but I have veteran people all around me and they are in my head all the time telling me to be smart and race like a veteran would. We're trying to be smooth, not over aggressive and not tear up our stuff - just like the veterans in this series do. I wish some of these other people would look at how Bobby Gill and Shane Huffman race. They might learn something and maybe then we wouldn’t be having 20 cautions a race.”
Up front, Shane Huffman drove to his first win of the season in front of Bobby Gill, Pistone, Shane Wallace and Jay Fogleman. Huffman’s winning speed was slowed to just 84.204 thanks to 22 caution periods totaling 108 of the 256 laps contested.
Mason earned $2,100 for the 12th-place, lead-lap finish and now has completed all but one of the 767 laps contested in three USAR Hooters Pro Cup Southern Division events this season.
The Montgomery event will be telecast by The SPEED Channel on a taped-delayed basis on Wednesday, March 30, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time.
Mason and his No. 75 Mason Motorsports Ford Taurus will next return to Hooters Pro Cup action on Saturday, April 8, in the a 250-lap event at Peach State Speedway outside Jefferson, GA. The event will take the green flag at 7:30 p.m.
“I haven’t seen the point standings yet, but I pretty sure we’ve moved into the Top-10 in points and we might be leading in the Rookie of the Year points after Trevor (Bayne) had some trouble tonight,” said Mason (shown at right in the driver's meeting with car chief Charlie Stevens) “We had another strong car and good run tonight and the car is on the trailer with no chassis damage. We’ll have quite a bit of bodywork to do before Jefferson, but we’ll be ready when they open the gate. Maybe we can get that first Top-10 finish there.”
For more information about corporate marketing and media 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.
