COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado -- After leading the first 94 laps of the 150 lap NASCAR Re/Max Rent-Right West 150 at Pikes Peak International Raceway Saturday morning, Auggie Vidovich took a strong second place finish in his first appearance in the Re/Max Challenge Series before some 15,000 spectators on the one mile oval.
Qualifying eighth, out of forty-four entries on Friday afternoon, the starting line-up for the Saturday morning event inverted the top eight qualifiers, putting Auggie on the pole. When the green flag dropped at 10:30, Auggie said catch me if you can. By the 82nd lap, he had a seven second lead over Re/Max regulars Jon Lemke, Eddie Hoffman, Ryan Hanson, and Steve Carlson.
On lap 94, Auggie pitted. On lap 97 he was 13th, two laps down. On lap 100, he was 10th, one lap down. On lap 105, 8th on the lead lap. Lap 110 he was 3rd, where he remained until lap 146 when he went by Ryan Hemphill into 2nd where he finished 3.5 seconds behind winner Tim Schendel.
In a pre-race interview, Vidovich said, "We came to this race because I figured the more I run the big tracks the better off I'll be because I plan on running Winston Cup some day and if thats what I'm going to do I need to get on these big tracks".
While not the first time on a "big track", it would appear that in this instance, he did quite well.
