Jason White looks to finish off NASCAR Canadian Tire Series season well

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September 4, 2013

DSCF9095 — Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin

This past weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsports, Jason White started off the weekend looking for speed, though got better as the weekend went on. He qualified in the 26th position and said as the race went on, the car got better and he came home with a 17th place finish.

“Car really came around today,” he said after the Clarington 200. “We started off really tight but it came around real good and near the end, we were only about half a second off the leaders. We were just waiting for a green-white-checkered, which I guess NASCAR decided we didn’t need so pretty disappointed in that. All in all, car got better throughout the weekend and we gained 10 positions so we’re pretty happy with that.”

NASCAR decided against a green flag finish when the caution flew with nine laps to go because the Canadian Tire Series cars were at their allotted time limit in NASCAR’s attempt to keep the Camping World Truck Series event on schedule.

The race, though, mirrors White’s season so far as he has had some good finishes including a fifth at St. Eustache, while having some not so good finishes. So far this year, White has finished in the top 15 in each race except this past weekend and currently sits eighth in points.

“It’s been up and down,” the driver of the No. 21 A&W/Bowers & Wilkins/Thermal Technology Dodge said. “We’ve been getting better and we’re just trying to keep the car on track. when we do, we run pretty well so we’ll finish off the last two races and see if we can get up to seventh or sixth in points.”

Heading into the final two races of the year at Barrie Speedway and Kawartha Speedway, White is only 38 points out of sixth and two points out of 12th.

“We have to finish both top 10 both times to have a good points finish so we’ll just have to see where it goes,” he commented. “Barrie should be interesting and Kawartha is the last race of the year so we’ll see what happens then.”

White hasn’t had the best of luck at Barrie Speedway the past five years, failing to finish three of the five races and having a best finish of 13th in 2010. Meanwhile at Kawartha Speedway, White has two top 10s in six starts. If the British Columbia native can stay out of trouble both races, though, look for him to be in contention for a solid finish.

Matt Crafton survives chaos in Canada to keep points lead

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SM Staff

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September 4, 2013

DSCF9422 — Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin

The key for Matt Crafton going into the weekend was survival. All the driver of the No. 88 Menards Toyota Tundra wanted to was get through the weekend in one piece and keep the points lead.

“That’s all its about,” he said coming into the weekend. “Definitely you want to be fast, but at the same time, you want to keep all four tires on the black stuff. If you stay on the road and you’re there at the end, you’ll contend for the win or a top five without a doubt.”

Crafton did just that as he escaped the wrecks on the last lap to finish 10th, now holding a 47 points lead over James Buescher.

One of the problems that the ThorSport Racing team dealt with was a lack of speed during the race due to tuning back the motor for fuel-mileage reasons.

“I’m glad it’s over, to tell you the truth,” crew chief Carl Joiner said on CTMP’s pit road after the race. “We didn’t have a lot of speed in our truck because we gave up a little bit of power in our motor to get better fuel mileage and it wasn’t a fuel-mileage race for us, after all. I don’t believe I’ll ever do that again because our Triad motors have plenty of horsepower every week, and we need to use it.”

Even with that said, Crafton was proud of not only himself but his team for how the weekend went.

“I enjoyed this racetrack and felt like the more laps we ran, the better we were getting,” Crafton said. “What my ThorSport guys did to improve this truck is what we’ve been doing all season. We’ve just got to get a little better, yet.”

“We worked our tails off, I can tell you that — as bad-to-the-bone as our guys always are,” Joiner added. “We rebuilt virtually our whole Menards Toyota Tundra, from the suspension up. We’ve just got to start getting better through the whole weekend. We had good speed at Michigan and Bristol but we’re going to hit our stride right here because we’re coming to some tough racetracks, but they’re good for us.”

With the road course out of the way, you have to think that the ThorSport Racing team is confident heading into the second half of the season after their first half. Crafton has yet to finish outside of the top 10 this year with a win earlier this year at Kansas.

Going into this weekend, the confidence is even higher as Crafton has finished no worse than ninth in sixth starts at Iowa Speedway, including a win in 2011. He finished sixth there in the spring.