Wade Day captures second consecutive ISCARS victory at Music City Motorplex

Topics:  Wade Day

Walden Motorsports Communications
ISCARS
October 10, 2005

BRISTOL, TN - The Highlands Motorsports team and driver Wade Day entered the International Sport Compact Auto Racing Series event on Saturday, Oct. 8 at the Music City Motorplex with momentum on their side. Day was coming off his first victory of the year in the series' previous stop at Lonesome Pine Raceway, and heading to the legendary 5/8-mile track, located on the Tennessee State Fairgrounds in Nashville, he was atop the points leaderboard by 25 over his closest challenger.

Day, driving the Food Country USA, Lopez & Associates, Refrigerator Services Inc., Wix Filters, Integra Springs & Shocks, Racepak Data, Wilwood, Hytech Performance Coatings, Toyota Racing Development, Turn Key Fabrication, Razor Race Cars, No. 96 Highlands Motorsports Toyota Celica, set fast-time in qualifying and led the final 60 circuits en route to capturing his second consecutive ISCARS victory.

In the early going of the 100-lap event, Day dropped back to third in the running order behind brothers Jake and Justin Hobgood. While leading on lap 20, Jake spun to bring out the caution and was relegated to the rear of the field for the restart, thus moving Day into the runner-up spot. Back under green, Day was pressuring Justin for the point. Getting a strong run off turn two on lap 40, Day grabbed a lead he would never relinquish, though he was challenged over the final five laps following a late-race caution that tightened the field up for a dash to the checkers.

"Man, this is awesome winning our second consecutive race," said a smiling Day while celebrating with his crew in victory lane. "We had a really good car, but I sure didn't want to see that caution come out there at the end and erase the lead we had built up. To be quite honest, I was kind of concerned there on that shootout to the finish. For some reason our car just didn't want to come back up to speed like it should have. I knew Justin (Hobgood) and Eric (Wilson) both were strong, and it really helped me when they got to battling with one another for second-place. Eric got around Justin and I looked up in the mirror and saw he was coming, and coming hard. But we were fortunate enough to hold him off to get the win.

"It was really cool to win at the Fairgrounds, because over the years a lot of top racers like Darrell Waltrip, Coo Coo Marlin and also his son Sterling Marlin, Bobby Hamilton, Mike Alexander, Bobby and Donnie Allison, Red Farmer and many others raced there on a regular basis. And the track also used to be a regular stop on the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit, too. It feels good to know that our name is now written in the record book as a winner in Music City."

With two victories and a third-place finish in the first three ISCARS events, Day has a comfortable lead in the point standings heading into this weekend's "Fall Brawl" at the historic Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway for a 150-lap event on Sunday, Oct. 16. The ISCARS teams will be co-headlining the racing program along with the Late Model Stocks, who will be running a 250-lap main. Day and the Highlands Motorsports team plan on pulling double-duty, racing in both events, and the Elizabethton, Tenn., driver will be looking for his third-straight ISCARS victory.

"We've really got our Dash car running well – it's a proven winner, and we're looking forward to running our new Late Model Stock again," said Day from his race shop on Monday. "We didn't get the results we wanted a couple weeks ago when we ran the UARA race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Not making excuses, but we really worked our butts off the week leading up to Bristol just finishing the car up, and looking back now, we just weren't as ready as we would've liked to have been. When you race at Bristol, you had better bring your A-game with you.

"Highlands Motorsports owner Wade Lopez, he and I both are really pumped about our new race car business (Razor Race Cars) that we began back in the summer where we're now building asphalt Late Models. Several fellow competitors looked our car over at Bristol and really liked what they saw. All the local racers at Hickory are tough, but hopefully we'll be right up at the front contending for the win this Sunday. When we go to race, we go to win. But now that we're building race cars, we also want to run strong to catch the eyes of the other racers to hopefully get them behind the wheel of a Razor racecar. There should be a big field of cars present this weekend from North and South Carolina, and it'd be awesome to be able to win both the ISCARS and Late Model Stock races. We'll give it our best."

To contact Highlands Motorsports, located in Bristol, Tenn., call (423) 968-5484. To learn more about Wade Day, visit his Web site at www.wadeday.com