YOUNG CLAIMS SECOND CONSECUTIVE ASA SPEED TRUCK CHALLENGE RACE AT ORANGE SHOW

Source: Dave Grayson
Date: 07/03/2006

If there's any driver in the ASA Speed Truck Challenge who is on fire right now it's definitely Darren Young who won his second, consecutive, 100 lap series feature, July 1st, at the Orange Show Speedway, a quarter mile paved oval, in San Bernardino, California. Young led all of the 100 laps and had to fend off a late race challenge from his teammate, Lee Hatch, which led to a one-two finish for the United Nissan team.

Young and Victor Pfluger led the starting field under the initial green flag but the start was flawed when Brian Colodny's Dodge spun heading into turn three before the entire field could complete the first lap. Following the return of the green flag, Young flexed his racing muscle and soon opened up a full straightaway lead. However that lead evaporated on lap 32 due to a backstretch spin out that brought out the race's second caution flag.

By this point in the race Lee Hatch was mounting a fast and furious challenge against Pfluger and successfully took over second right before Jessee Houser's turn three spin brought out caution number three. On the ensuing restart, Young and Hatch made quick work of pulling away from the field, as well as picking off the lapped traffic, and it appeared that the United Nissan team was going to settle this race between themselves. Their race rhythm was disrupted again when the fourth caution of the race came out on lap 66 when a turn two altercation led to Cole Houser's spin. The final caution came late in the race, on lap 84, when the Chevrolets of Scott Dodd and Bobby McGowan, while racing for fifth place, hit each other in turn four.

When the green flag reappeared there were only eight laps left and the capacity crowd was on its feet to witness a shootout between teammates. Young and Hatch didn't disappoint the crowd and there was a little contact between them in the final moments. However, Young seemed to have a little more left on his set of tires and ran out the final five laps with Hatch right behind them. Pfluger, Chad Boat and Randel King completed the top five.

After the race a very happy winner praised his team for a well prepared race truck and said "I'm telling you if it wasn't for the guys back at the shop, with this United Nissan team, I wouldn't have been able to do what I did tonight and it's always nice to have a teammate to share set up notes with and so forth because you can do twice as much and the results are, obviously, what happened tonight with out one-two finish. Preparation is obviously the key to successful longevity during a season."

Commenting on the late race shootout with Hatch, Young said "We knew we were going for the win. I had issues with my brakes and on my restarts I had to pump the pedal probably five times. He, (Hatch), definitely burned his tires off trying to get by the couple of guys to get to me and I attribute that to my win tonight. He burned up his tires early and, at the end, I didn't have any brakes and it took me awhile to get going. He was good on the short runs and I was good on the long runs and all I knew was if I could just get through one and two smooth then I would be good for the rest of the time. It worked out good."

Young came to the Orange Show Speedway as the serie's co points leader and left as the sole leader. "Again, the United Nissan team gave us this opportunity to do it. They're coming through with everything they said they would do, they provide awesome trucks and they show up on the weekends to be there to make whatever changes that need to be made. It's a total team effort and it's showing," he said.

See Also .:

• Orange Show Speedway Track Page

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