Recapping The Week That Was For HBR Racing

Story By: MANDEE PAUCH / HBR – WEEDSPORT, NY – Heading into the middle of July, both HBR teams combined have produced 23 top-five finishes thus far this season.

The team was able to add three more top-five results to their impressive stats this past weekend.

Jimmy Phelps and Max McLaughlin had a busy three-day weekend that opened Thursday evening at Airborne Speedway in Plattsburgh, N.Y.

Thursday evening Phelps finished where he started in his heat race, in fourth, which placed him on the outside of the sixth row for the main event.

“We were a little too good too early,” Phelps said. “Knowing what we know now maybe we would have made a few changes that would have given us a shot.”

Phelps mentioned how tire choices came into play for the feature. “We got snookered by Larry (Wight) on tires,” he said. “He definitely made the right call. For being one of the guys that made the wrong tire call we had a good outcome. We were pretty happy with Thursday.”

Teammate McLaughlin ran second in his heat race, which locked him into the feature redraw.

McLaughlin drew the second-highest number, eleventh, for the main event and was able to maneuver his way to the front to finish second. McLaughlin’s Thursday night results tied his best Super DIRTcar Series finish to date.

“It was a good finish for our first time being there,” McLaughlin said. “We need to be a lot better to beat those guys but we’re getting better, we’re digging.”

The team then went to Brewerton Speedway the following night.

Phelps qualified second in his heat race from his fourth-place starting spot.

Phelps rolled out tenth for the main event.

“Friday was one of those nights where we had ourselves testing a little bit,” he said. “We really got mired in traffic and wasn’t really going anywhere. When I had an opportunity late in the race I pit to make some more changes to see if we would learn something and we did.”

Phelps noted the changes late in the race helped improve the car but ran out of time to get the momentum built back up to gain anymore ground.

Phelps capped off the night with a 13th-place finish.

McLaughlin started second in his heat and fell back a spot, crossing the line in third

McLaughlin started on the outside of the third row for the main event and was able to pick off a couple of positions and take home a fourth-place finish.

“It was tough on Friday,” he said. “There wasn’t much passing.”

The teams’ weekend continued on to Fulton Speedway on Saturday.

Phelps started the night off strong by picking off a few cars and winning his heat race from fourth-place.

“In the heat we had a really good car,” he said. “We made some adjustments but didn’t go far enough.”

The feature went green to checkered.

“We were decent but not decent enough to make a real hard charge. We settled for sixth from our 11th-place starting spot.”

McLaughlin caught a tough break early in the evening.

“We ran into ignition problems so we had to bring out the backup car for the feature.”

McLaughlin started deep in the field but was able to drive through and finish 13th.

“There wasn’t much we could do about that,” he said. “The race went green to checkered so we did the best we could.”

The team was scheduled to run a four-day weekend but the weekend was cut short when the Super DIRTcar Series race at Cornwall Speedway rained out Sunday evening.