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2004-07-10
Kenton Gray in Legends Car #1, won the pole with fasted qualifying time and followed up with near-perfect race execution to pull off a second place finish in the King Taco Legends race Saturday at Irwindale Speedway.
This was the fourth race at Irwindale for the Legends Series, and for Kenton, the success of this race serves as a pivot point for the team and the season, having come after some tough breaks in earlier races.
“We learned a lot over the three days prior to the race, with the car’s setup needing a lot of work after the crash on 12 June – we’ve been running a fast car all season but it just wouldn’t hook up and was creating a lot of problems. We were determined to get it right and get the car running the way it should. It was a painful three days, but it all paid off today. With a fresh set of tires and with the setup adjusted, we drove clean and actually a bit conservative. I wanted to make sure we finished the race without any carnage on the field. We’ll be taking it home now, so Tom Landreth can look forward to seeing us in front of him for the rest of the season.”
The race itself was one of the least eventful of the season for the Legends, with only one two-car crash, and a few spinouts punctuating an otherwise clean race, not a bad day for a 32 car field. But the sparring for top five positions made for quite a spectacle, and Kenton’s volley for first place, though unsuccessful, kept fans on the edge of their seats and put him only a tenth of a second behind Tom Landreth in the number 30 car at the finish line.
Kenton has turned heads and created quite a buzz with the local racing scene as an unknown Rookie with top-qualifying times all season, and expectations are now being fulfilled. We all knew Kenton was a front-runner, now the world knows. Getting a close second at the finish line isn’t the win that Kenton would be satisfied with, but it was a VERY close second, and well earned through the team’s hard work and success in both handling the car’s setup and strategy on the track. Rest assured he won’t be driving quite as conservatively on August 7th.
We’ll see you there!
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