Santos capitalized on an opportune
qualifying draw to duck out on the track just ahead of a passing rain
shower, and his time held up to win the Coors Light Pole Award for
the TSI Harley-Davidson 125 at Stafford Motor Speedway on Friday.
“I'm just really excited,” said
Santos, who has eight career Whelen Modified Tour poles, including
three at Stafford. “It's a lot of fun each time I drive for (Tinio
Racing). We're not able to do all the races, but when we go, we do it
right.”
In the fourth event of the season,
Santos is making just his second start for Tinio. He plans to run
only a partial schedule in 2012 while also continuing to run USAC
cars in the midwest.
Eric Berndt, Bryon Chew, Ryan Preece
and Doug Coby rounded out the Top-5 qualifiers.
The first 17 cars hit the track for
their time trial runs before rain pelted the Turn 1 and 2 end of the
half-mile oval. Santos had been the second-to-last car to post a time
before the qualifying session was interrupted. Santos, who said he
never got to make a true mock-qualifying run in practice after rain
shortened that session earlier in the afternoon, had little doubt
that having qualified before the weather hit helped out the No. 44
Imperial Cars/Tinio Corporation Chevrolet.
“I think we definitely had a good
draw. It's never good to be early at Stafford – but we went early,”
Santos said. “It sprinkled a little bit when we actually qualified.
They told me over the radio, 'It's raining, be careful.' But I was
going to run it as hard as I can. It's qualifying.”
The Top-8 qualifiers – and 11 of the
Top-14 in the 26-car field – all posted their times before the rain
delay.
“This means a lot for the moral of
the guys. It helps them out, and it just makes everybody happy,”
said Santos, who won the 2010 Tour championship and all seven of his
previous poles while driving for owner Bob Garbarino. “Anything we
can do good is a good thing, so there's nothing wrong with getting
the pole.”
– TB
No comments:
Post a Comment