Jimmy Phelps, Max McLaughlin & HBR Collects Top-Ten Finishes At The Big Show
Story By: MANDEE PAUCH / HBR – WEEDSPORT, NY – The Heinke Baldwin Race team rallied two top-ten finishes Tuesday evening at the 11thAnnual Big Show at Albany-Saratoga Speedway.
Jimmy Phelps opened the evening by setting fast time in his group, which lined him up on the pole of his heat race.
Phelps pulled away in his heat to take the checkers, placing him in the top-12 redraw for the main event.
“It felt like we needed a little something to run with the best cars,” he said. “We made some changes for the feature.”
Phelps rolled off on the outside of the third row for the 111-lap main event.
“I was a little disappointed with our overall finish,” added Phelps. “I think our car was better than where we finished.”
Phelps and the no.98h machine didn’t start off strong, but towards the halfway mark things started to improve.
“We played catchup until the middle of the race,” he said. “We’d start to get our ball rolling and then a yellow would come out. It took a while to get our tires back again after those starts. We had a top five car, but we came up a little short. I felt we were in the mix, so that was a good takeaway for us.”
Phelps closed out the evening with a seventh-place finish.
Max McLaughlin made a return back behind the wheel of the no.6h machine Tuesday evening.
With little seat time in the car this year, the team decided to try something new early on in the night.
“It didn’t work too well so we went back to the basics,” he said.
McLaughlin ran second in his heat race, placing him into the top-12 redraw.
McLaughlin started on the inside of the fifth row for the main event.
“We tried some stuff in the feature and it woke the car up,” he said. “We had a lot of good cars ahead of us which made it tough to pass because everyone was so fast. Sheppard and I went at it for a good 30 laps back and forth until I finally got by him. It just took me too long to get by each car. At the end we were just as good as the leaders. We were fast but needed to use up the whole track to be fast.”
McLaughlin maneuvered his way through the field to collect a solid fourth-place finish.
“Now that we found something, I think we can fine tune and be good for our next race with the Super DIRTcar Series at Land of Legends Raceway.”
Next on tap for Jimmy Phelps and the No.98h team will be Brewerton Speedway Friday evening, then a double header with the Super DIRTcar Series at Cornwall Motor Speedway on Sunday and Plattsburgh Airborne Speedway on Monday.
