Hafertepe Grabs Pair Of Podium Finishes At Bubba Raceway Park

Story By: BRYAN HULBERT / SAM HAFERTEPE JR. RACING – OCALA, FL – Kicking off his 2019 season at Bubba Raceway Park this past weekend in USCS competition, Sam Hafertepe, Jr. collected a pair of podium finishes at the egg-shaped oval.

Coming in Friday with a run from seventh to second in his Heat Race, Sam positioned the Hills Racing No. 15h on the pole of the A-Feature. Leading the first 11 rounds, a mid-race restart would allow eventual race winner, Davie Franek, his shot at the lead with Hafertepe slipping back to third in the closing laps.

“We’d been going through lapped traffic and was able to pass on the top and the bottom. The top is where we’d led it from the start of the race, and I went there on the restart and the bottom had started to come in and take rubber. Just kind of gave it away really but that’s part of it sometimes. I definitely felt like we had the fastest car so that was a plus and just took that steam into the next night,” commented Hafertepe on the Friday performance.

Betting his Saturday Heat Race performance to a win, Sam lined up fifth in the A-Feature with his run at race leader, Mark Smith, building strong in the closing laps, but just short, after falling back to nearly 10th at the start of the race.

“They worked the track a little bit before the feature, and they just didn’t run it in enough. I went in the first few laps and just slid through the slime so that put us back to about ninth or tenth, so I had to make a charge through the field. Just came up one spot short but had a good car and was able to run Mark down in the closing laps even with the bottom taking rubber again. It would have been tough to pass him, but we had one of the better cars all night.”

Using the Florida trip to test and tune, Hafertepe so far is very pleased with the way the car has progressed, especially with East Bay Raceway Park on the horizon.

“From what we generally do at a lot of places, we basically did the opposite and we seemed to have good speed right out the box and the results reinforce that to run good two nights in a row with a chance to win both nights. That makes up happy going into East Bay and try to pick up the $10,000 on Saturday night.”

Already sitting pit side at the 43rd annual Winter Nationals and 18th annual Ronald Laney Memorial, action at East Bay Raceway Park takes place February 14-16, 2019.