BRETT THOMPSON HOPES SUCCESS AT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA TRACK CONTINUES IN TODAY'S NASCAR GRAND NATIONAL WEST SERIES RACE

Source: NASCAR
Date: 08/11/2007

DAYTONA BEACH, Florida – The NASCAR Grand National Division, West Series has visited California Speedway each year since the Fontana, Calif., track opened a decade ago. Drivers are in for a new adventure this season, however, as they tackle the speedway’s 21-turn, 2.8-mile road course.

Ten years after a Grand National West Series race served as the inaugural NASCAR event at California Speedway in 1997, a West Series race will mark the first NASCAR event on the road course there – with the California 125 on Saturday, Aug. 11.

With two road course events already under their belts this year, drivers are quickly adapting to the challenge of hustling their 3,300-pound stock cars around left and right corners.

Brett Thompson (No. 61 Pets Best Insurance/Thompson Motorsports Chevrolet) has always done well on the 2-mile superspeedway at Fontana, with top-10 finishes in all five of his starts there. The 30-year-old driver from Jerome, Idaho, hopes his success continues on the road course.

“We’re looking forward to this race,” Thompson said. “I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve been learning a lot about road course stuff the last few races, at Miller (Motorsports Park) and Sonoma. It’s getting more and more fun. I’m getting better. We’re learning more about the car and what changes we need to make to go fast.”

It’s been a learning experience for both driver and crew, according to Thompson. “It’s all new to most of my guys,” he said. “My crew chief, (Lonnie Rush Jr.) fortunately, has a lot of time on road courses. But for the rest of my guys, it’s been an adjustment. And for me to be able to tell them what (the car) is doing and what we need to do, it’s been a big adjustment.”

Thompson has also worked to adapt his driving style to road racing, he said. “I just constantly tell myself, ‘Take your time on entry and drive it off.’ I’m big on the kind of tracks where you can drive the car in hard and it doesn’t affect you on the exit,” he said. “I overdrive the corners. That’s the way I am. I’ve been doing my best not to do it. I’ve learned a lot the last couple of races and I’m getting better. I’m looking forward to Fontana. I think we’ll have a good run there.”

A good finish at California Speedway would help ease some of the frustration Thompson felt after his most recent road course event.

“I had a real upsetting race at Miller,” he said of last month’s event at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah. “I thought we could have done a lot better, but we ended up getting crashed early on.”

Problems in that race, coupled with mechanical trouble in his first road race a year ago at Infineon Raceway, have limited Thompson’s opportunity to gain road racing experience. “We had motor problems last year (at Infineon), so I really didn’t get a chance to learn anything or do anything there,” he said. “I considered Sonoma this year as my first time to run a road course.”

The result was an 18th-place finish, on the lead lap.

Meanwhile, Thompson hopes his experience on the 2-mile superspeedway at Fontana will benefit him, because a portion of the big track is incorporated into the road course. “I’ve always been really good in turns one and two at California,” Thompson said. “When I pass cars, it’s usually there. It’s just a corner that suits me well. That’s probably going to be a big part of the track – where you’re going to make your most passes, is down the straightaway and through there. I’m not sure how many other passing points we’ll have.”

With only two races remaining on the schedule for the West Series, Thompson knows the importance of a top finish in this event. A good performance would also help him overcome some of the frustration he encountered after starting the season strong.

“We should have finished better in several races,” Thompson said. “We’ve been up in the top five almost every race. Looking back, at Phoenix we were fifth with two laps to go and ran out of gas. At Colorado, we were up to third at one point and got spun out. There’s been several races I felt that got taken away from us. With good finishes there, we would have been easily in the top five in points right now. I need to make some big jumps in the next two races. I need to get up there. My goal would be to finish in the top five in points this year.”

To finish in the top five of the championship standings would be a career-best mark for Thompson. Ironically, it could come in a year that started off without a definite game plan.

“When we started off the season, we weren’t sure what the plan was,” Thompson recalled. “We had several (drivers) interested in running partial seasons. We started running good and I was having too much fun. I didn’t want to turn it over just yet. We canceled those plans and decided to run the whole season.”

See Also .:

• Brett Thompson Driver Card
• California Speedway Road Course Track Page

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