ROSEBURG, Oregon -- Eric Norris delivered another championship performance this weekend at Douglas County Speedway in Roseburg, Oregon, finishing 2nd. The finish adds to Norris’s already storybook season. In the first nine of ten races on the 2002 NASCAR Winston West schedule, Norris has posted career numbers: 2 wins, 2 poles, 6 top-3’s, 9 top-10’s and a Series leading average finish of 3.66.
Norris, who entered the race with a 46 point lead in the Championship standings over Austin Cameron, qualified 8th and ran in the top-5 virtually the entire race. By lap 100, when the race was paused - as planned - to allow teams to service their respective cars, Norris was in third place. Cameron, who had lost a lap early in the race but was able to regain it prior to the halfway break, was several spots behind Norris when the race resumed on the ˝ mile oval.
“We knew the 16 (Cameron) was coming once they were able to get their lap back,” said Norris. “We just wanted to stick to our plan and focus on maintaining our position in the front of the field for the last 100 laps, which we did. To be honest, the Jani-King car was tight all night but good enough to stay in the top-three and give us a shot at the win.”
Several cautions in the second half of the race set up a wild finish that featured Cameron and Norris in a two lap “green-white-checkered” dash to the finish. While Cameron was able to get a jump on Norris at the final restart, Norris quickly closed the gap and entered the final turn directly on Cameron’s bumper. Visions of Norris’ first career Winston West win, a bump and run at the final turn at Mesa Marin in Bakersfield, California in October, 1999 entered the now veteran driver’s mind.
“There’s too much at stake for me and Austin to be doing anything like that now,” commented Norris. “It’s different now than it was back in 1999 when we were trying to notch our first win. I could have gotten into Austin, but we’ve raced clean all year long and don’t want to win a race, let alone a Championship, that way. If we had one more lap I think we could have gotten by.”
The result was a miraculous .320 of a second win for Cameron and Norris’ third 2nd place finish of the year. By virtue of his win, Cameron managed to move 10 points closer to Norris in the Championship to a margin of 36. The stage is set for a Championship showdown between Norris and Cameron in the Series finale at 1˝ mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway on October 12.
For more information on Eric Norris and Norris Racing, visit their all-new web site at
www.norrisracing.com
