PFLUGER BECOMES FOURTH DIFFERENT SERIES WINNER IN ASA SPEED TRUCK CHALLENGE ACTION AT TUCSON.

Source: DGrayson
Date: 04/23/2007

There's no question about it, the ASA Go Fast Speed Truck Challenge Series' 2007 season is shaping up to be one the most competitive ever in the decade plus history of this regional touring series for racing trucks. The first three races this year turned up three different winners and that streak continued, April 21st, when Victor Pfluger became the fourth different driver, to vist an ASA Speed Truck Challenge Series victory lane, after winning the 100 lap feature at Tucson Raceway Park.

The 16 year old driver, from Morristown-Arizona, and his #80 Parker Farms-Copperstate Tire-La Horgue Racecars Dodge, completely dominated this event and easily led the majority of the laps. He started his evening in Tucson off on a strong note by setting the fast time in qualifying for the fourth consecutive race. The win also reinstated him as the series' points leader.

The Tucson Raceway Park is a .375 mile paved oval with multi tiered banking and the vehicles from the ASA Speed Truck Challenge Series took advantage of the very challenging racing lines and often ran three wide coming off of the turns. Despite the intensity of this close quarter racing, and the potential recipe for a wreck, this event was only disrupted four times by yellow caution flags with only one of the incidents being serious enough to stop the field with a red flag.

That incident presented itself on lap 66 when the truck driven by Colin Dickerson dramatically slowed coming into turn four with a sudden loss of power. The truck slowly coasted onto the high line of the front stretch. By the time the track official had a chance to react and throw the yellow flag the field was already coming off of turn four at full racing speed. Trucks driven by Tim Allen and Scott Franchimone got together while trying to avoid hitting the stalled truck. Franchimone got the worst part of the situation and slammed hard into the frontstretch wall. The field was red flagged to allow emergency officials access to the scene. Franchimone was not injured by the crash but the same could not be said for his Chevrolet Truck.

After enduring some challenges from Austin Murphy and Randel King, Victor Pfluger finally completed that all important 100th lap and pulled his Dodge into Tucson Raceway Park's victory lane. Once out of the truck, the happy winner said "Chuck LaHorgue put a great set up under this truck tonight. We had a couple of challenges tonight but the truck was so dominant that I even had a little something extra at the end." When asked about the yellow flags disrupting his racing rhythm, Pfluger said "these 20-70 tires, that we're running on the right sides this year, do not like getting cold and then getting hot again. I had some problems when the yellows came out trying to get back up to speed on the restarts. But, once we did, we were able to pull away and hold our own out there."

The ASA Speed Truck Challenge win at Tucson capped off a very good week for this talented young driver. The Saturday before he completely dominated, and won, a Late Model race at the Lucas Oil I-10 Speedway in Blythe-California.

Finishing second in this race was Randel "The Rocket" King the driver of the #84 Hype Manufacturing-Clay Andrews Racing Chevrolet. The 14 year old driver from Riverside-California worked hard to get through the starting field for a late race run at the leader. Commenting on his evening in Tucson, King said "I just can't thank Hype Manufacturing and Clay Andrews enough. We came here last Thursday and rented the track for a test session. We were really fast and were only a tenth of a second from the track record. Then during the ASA schueduled Friday night test session our motor blew up. We rolled out our back up truck and tried to set it up very similiar to our primary one. We got our pre race set up really close and, in fact, if I would have had just a little more time I think I could have won this race."

Commenting on the close quarter racing, on the track's multi tier banking, King said "It was a lot of fun. We ran a lot on the top side where our truck was working the most. The bottom was a little tough for our set up but we did manage to get by a few trucks while we were running down there. This is an awesome track and I really like it."

Austin Murphy, driver of the #07 Roxpro-Frasier Masonry-Lucas Oil Chevrolet, finished third and was a major factor throughout much of this race. Commenting on his night a the Tucson Raceway Park the young driver, from Lancaster-California, said "it was really hard out there tongiht. I had him, (Pfluger), a couple of times but I ended up third because of a tire that was going down. But, overall, it was a good night."

Like so many young drivers in the ASA Speed Truck Challenge, Murphy began his career at a very young age and had immediate success in Mini Dwarf, Bandelero and Legend Cars. When asked about making the adjustment to the larger and faster ASA Speed Trucks he said "we ran a couple of their races last year. Then we decided to run their full schedule this year and go for the Rookie Of The Year title. So far, it's looking good."

Series veteran Jim Putnam, driver of the #12 Performance Grading Dodge, is having a very consistent year, including winning the season opener, and finished fourth at Tucson. Commenting on his effort the Corona-California driver said "we did allright, we started sixth and just kind of worked our way up. Right around lap 50 I lost a little ground trying to make a pass, got caught up on the high side and it took me the rest of the race to get caught back up. We came home fourth, we're second in the points, so we'll move on to these road course races coming up."

Completing the top five was Cave Creek-Arizona's Cole Houser the driver of the John's Concrete-Phoenix Snow Plow-Johnny's Cash Ford. Commenting on his Tucson evening he said "our truck was set up great. In fact, it was the best set up I've had all season. It went everywhere I wanted it to go and you just can't ask for anything better." Commenting on the varied racing lines that the Tucson Raceway Park offered him, Houser said "that was very exciting. It was a lot of excitment for the drivers and I'm sure the spectators as well."

Also very pleased with the Tucson race was Jay Rutherford, President of the ASA Speed Truck Challenge, who said "it's unbelieveable. Who would have thought that we could gone this far, (without a repeat winner). The real key here is the fact that we've qualified almost 90 trucks in four events and from first to last there's only a speed difference of six-tenths of a second. That many trucks, that many race tracks, that many drivers: I think we've got a pretty competitive series."

In addition to the excitment of the ASA Speed Truck 100 lap feature, Tucson Raceway Park also presented their Inex Series Legend Car Series. Eric Christensen put on a very dominant performance and won the 25 lap feature. Cassie Gannis, Blake Leuth, Suave Brachowski, Romano Cionni III and Robert Ashley followed the winner under the checkers. In the preliminary events Cionni won the trophy dash while Leuth took the heat race.

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