16-year-old Michael Pope headed to Lanier National Speedway this past weekend hoping to be able to bring home a trophy on Saturday night in the Georgia Asphalt Series race as part of the "Saturday of Speed". Those hopes were washed away by the rain that canceled the event on Saturday night and postponed it to Sunday afternoon.
Despite the rain, the weekend was started off with the discovery of a problem with the #44 machine on Saturday afternoon during practice.
“During practice we figured out that we had something wrong
with the rearend, the car just wouldn’t handle,” said Pope. “This
morning we got out here and we squared up the rearend and found
that it was cocked to the right 3/8ths of an inch and that was
making the car really, really tight. I didn’t know how it was going
to feel during the race but during the race it felt a lot better but it
still wasn’t quite right.”
Pope struggled with the ill-handling car throughout the race and
was able to tough it out to bring home a 20th-place finish on
Sunday afternoon.
The GAS series has the next two weeks off and Pope plans to do all that he and his team can do to make sure that the car is prepared as they head back to his favorite track.
“We are just going to take the car apart the next two weeks,” added Pope. “We want to make sure that everything is alright and that nothing is bent. Then we can come back at Peach State and hopefully do really good.”
The next race for the GAS Series will be on August 19th at Peach State Speedway with racing action starting at 7pm.
