Kansas: Patrick Sheltra practice report

ARCA Point's Leader Patrick Sheltra Posts Top-10 Practice Result At Kansas

"Sheltra Gunning For Win No. 3 Of 2010; Championship Still Biggest Focus"

KANSAS CITY, Kansas (September 30, 2010) - - Under gorgeous weather conditions, the ARCA Racing Series presented by RE/MAX and Menards tackled the 1.5-mile track of Kansas Speedway Thursday morning in preparation for this afternoon's Kansas Lottery 150. Current ARCA Racing Series point's leader Patrick Sheltra finished the two-hour session seventh fastest after posting a time of 32.111 seconds at 168.167 miles per hour.

[IMAGE]Sheltra, 24 aboard the No. 60 Tequesta Road and Bridge of Florida / Jones Group International Toyota Camry spent the morning practice session trying to find the perfect setup that could later surge the Sheltra Motorsports team to their third win of the season and second consecutive on a speedway.

Armed with Sheltra Motorsports chassis number 19, the same Toyota Camry that the team dominated the Ansell Protective Gloves 150 at Chicagoland Speedway on August 27, the team feels that they are headed in the right direction to award Sheltra with his fourth career ARCA victory.

Immediately Sheltra's No. 60 Tequesta Road and Bridge of Florida / Jones Group International Toyota Camry found itself near the top of the speed charts by moving into the third spot before slipping back to sixth where the team remained for much of the session.

Despite the extremely tight field, Sheltra and crew chief Jon Wolfe worked on improving the overall handling of their Japanese nameplate. The biggest struggle they faced during the lone practice session occurred in turns one and two where Sheltra reported he was "losing the nose."

While making some progress with the handling of their automobile, Sheltra made two mock qualifying runs late this morning in advance of this afternoon's Menards Pole by Ansell qualifying session. The first run, Sheltra was stalled by a slower machine. On the second run, Sheltra was on track to improve his run but a crash by the No. 59 of Leilani Munter put the yellow flag out and prematurely ended Sheltra's mock qualifying run.

Sheltra eventually slid to seventh when Robb Brent made his qualifying run and jumped from outside the top-10 to fifth fastest overall.

"It's extremely misfortunate that we were unable to maneuver a clean mock-qualifying run," sounded Sheltra. "We have a good car here today at Kansas. We struggled with "losing the nose" in turns one and two, but we were making steady improvements on correcting that, so I'm hopeful we won't have that problem in the race. We tried to go out twice to make qualifying runs and unfortunately, circumstances out of our control prevented us from showing what we really have. I feel like we have a good of a shot as anyone to make a significant improvement that will allow us to start today's race near the front."

Sheltra posted 51 laps during practice and was the fastest of the top-three in the ARCA Racing Series championship battle. Second place competitor Tom Hessert (15 points behind Sheltra) was 16th fastest while Craig Goess Jr., third in the standings (20 markers behind Sheltra) was trailing the No. 60 in eighth.

-source: sheltra motorsports