LEWIS PREPARES TO COME FULL CIRCLE AT IRWINDALE

Source: MLR/Gary Lewis Racing
Date: 10/17/2006

For 2006 AutoZone Elite Division Northwest Series champion, Gary Lewis, the run to the championship started last season at the Toyota All-Star Showdown on the famed .500-mile Irwindale Speedway.

Running in the top-10 for most of his qualifying heat, Lewis experienced transmission woes and was relegated to a starting position of 34th in the 40-car field.

The 37-year old maneuvered his Victory Circle/Nutter Racing Engines Chevrolet through the field to finish fifth and claim the highest running position of the 10 Northwest-based teams in the field.

Momentum carried over to this year’s run for the title, but Lewis would like to leave Irwindale this weekend with the top prize, he said.

“The win would mean everything for all of the people on the Sign Factory USA team. We have been working very hard the last month to prepare for this event and we feel really good about our chances.”

In past seasons the Emery Worldwide Moving crew would prepare a car for a run at Irwindale in an AutoZone Southwest Series event.

Not so this season, but Lewis indicated the team will not be lacking when it begins practice on Friday morning.

“Not running down there this year should not impact us to much hopefully with all the testing we did last year,” the two-time Northwest Series champion said.

“Practice does make perfect as they say so we will just have to see how things go. We did not want a bad wreck or something at a Southwest event this year to hurt our chances of winning the Northwest Series title so we decided to focus on those events and work hard once we got to Irwindale this weekend.”

With one day of practice as opposed to a two-day session in years past the set-up of the Leary Racing Products Monte Carlo will have to be right coming off the trailer, he added.

“It will make it tough for the teams that have not been to Irwindale in years past to only get one day of practice. With some of the new stuff that we have learned throughout the year we still need to get on the track as much as possible during the two 45-minute practice sessions just like they will. This team has spent many hours getting other combinations set up so we can be good to go when the practices get started.”

The fact that the weekend is a winner-take-all event with no points on the line makes the attention to detail that much more important.

“You want to run as hard as you can without making any bad decisions during a practice so you are ready for the qualifier but you need to have the car right for the main event on Saturday,” Lewis said. “It is very hard to get to the front so we would like to get most of our hard racing done on Friday night from 20th place to the front so that we can finish with a strong starting position for the final run of the weekend.”

Running before a large Los Angeles-area crowd and a national SPEED television audience is a motivation for the team to show that last year was not a flash in the pan, according to Lewis

“I want every Northwest driver to run up front this weekend and I know we will do whatever it takes to help our fellow Northwest racers find success in the last Showdown for the Elite division.”

To learn more about Gary Lewis and the Moore-Lewis Racing Team drop by www.garylewisracing.com

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