USAR: Mansfield: Brian Scott race report

"Up-And-Down" Doesn't Quite Describe Brian Scott's Day in Ohio
19-Year-Old Driver Comes Back From Being Lap Down Multiple Times for Top-10

MOORESVILLE, NC (June 11, 2007) -- There were a number of ways that 19-year-old Brian Scott could have described his day at Mansfield Motorsports Park on Saturday in the Greased Lightening 250 in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series.

Crazy. Insane. Wild. Up-And-Down. Fortunate. Any of those words would have worked. And not one of them would have done it justice.

Scott qualified on the outside pole, led laps and then came back from being a lap down not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions to score a ninth-place finish in his first Northern Division race of the year.

Just listening to Scott explain his day shows how impressive the run was.

"We started up front and led laps and everything was going good," said Scott. "They black flagged us for jumping a restart while we were leading, so we had to serve a stop-and-go penalty and got a lap down. We got the lucky dog and made that lap up. Then, we were running really well in the top 10 and a wreck happened right in front of us. I spun to miss it and we were lapped again because I couldn't get the car refired. Through a series of pit stops, we ended up being the benefactor (a rule Pro Cup has that allows anyone in front of the leaders on a restart to pass the pace car and get back on the lead lap). But you aren't allowed to pit when you are the benefactor, so we got back on the lead lap and went right back down a lap through a penalty for pitting. So we made that lap back up under green. That all happened before lap 180. So after that, we just worked on getting back up to the front and eventually made it up to ninth."

The fact that the team got back on the lead lap at the end of the night was a winning situation for the team and for Scott. Leading up to the race, Scott's previous best finish in his brief Pro Cup career was another ninth-place finish, which came at Concord Motorsport Park in May.

"It's a little bit of optimism for the team to be able to rebound after so many hard luck deals and still make a finish of it," added Scott. "But it seems like everything we are doing this year is rebounding. We know, though, if we didn't have bad luck what we are capable of. This is only the second race of the year in Hooters that we have finished without mechanical problems. That is very positive for me in that I know our team is really progressing.

"It's been a very up and down, emotional experience for me the last couple of months in racing. Making the best out of a little bit of hard luck has been tough. I'm an incredibly competitive person. Everyone gets done and congratulates me and tells me I made the best of what I could have, but in the end, to me it's still ninth. It doesn't matter what I went through, it's still ninth. But, the more I think about it, I realize how hard we worked for that finish and it makes me feel good."

Scott will now have a little bit of time off. He'll return to the seat at Myrtle Beach Speedway on June 23rd for the Pro Cup Southern Division race at the historic track.

-credit: www.brianscottracing.com.