BNS: Kelly Moore Beech Ridge Review

Scarborough, ME -- Kelly Moore finished 12th Saturday evening during the Primestar 150 Busch North Series, a NASCAR Touring Division, race at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway. A bad set of tires during a mid-race pit stop, and an unfortunate spin with another competitor cost the team several spots in the running order.

The Tic-Tac team had recently spent an entire day at the ¼ mile track testing Moore's Pontiac Grand Prix, and afterwards felt as though he'd be once again visiting victory lane at Beech Ridge. Saturday's practice session was very good for the team as they set the fastest speeds during several runs and were also optimistic that Moore could win his 2nd Bud Pole Award of 1998. "We had a good qualifying run and we had the fastest speed on the board for quite some time," Moore concludes, "Unfortunately we ended up 8th overall but considering how early we went out for our run, were pretty happy."

During the 150-lap event, Moore's car was very tight and prevented him from turning the car in and out of the turns as well as he would have liked. The team encouraged the driver to ride it out, with the hope that the tracks condition would change enough to free the car up. During a caution period, the team elected to pit to make necessary adjustments to the chassis, add fuel and change tires. Unfortunately, the tires did not match up well and Moore moved slowly back through the field. "The set of tires we put on just didn't come in at all," Moore explained. "The car was handling real bad and I just tried to keep off the wall at that point"

Though the car wasn't up to par, Moore continued to work his way up through the field. Moore was holding down the 10th spot when his car was hit hard from behind by Dale Shaw. The spin brought out a caution and the team pitted Moore to make additional chassis adjustments and fix some minor damage.

Once again Moore started from the rear of the field and had to fight his way back through heavy traffic, but was able to stay on the lead lap and finish 12th overall. "This was classic short track racing this evening, lots of banging going on out there," Moore said. "We were just a little off on our setup and that bad set of tires really hurt us in the middle part of the race. We've got a few weeks off and were gonna regroup and get ready for the challenge at Lime Rock."

The 1998 Busch North Series season will conclude on October 17th at Lime Rock Park. Moore currently sits in 3rd spot in the championship point standings and has high expectations of taking over the 2nd position with a good finish at Lime Rock.