The team had to make extraordinary repairs to the Dupont Performance Finishes/Spies Hecker, Lovering Volvo, Collision Centers of NH, and Enterprise Rent-a-Car sponsored Late Model prior to Friday night’s racing action. To team went to work immediately to get the car in prime racing form. Kenny Lawrence, frame expert, had the most crucial job of ‘straightening’ the car out after the rearend had been knocked to the left almost a foot in last week’s mayhem.

Not daunted, the work was completed but the actual performance of the car was a guess until practice. B.J. was comfortable in the car for the first practice, but crew chief Wayne Helliwell Sr. wanted to see how well the car scaled following the practice. After coming to a stop at the infield scales, B.J. radioed Helliwell to let him know he had no clutch. The problem was diagnosed as a broken hydraulic clutch line. The line was repaired prior to the second practice. But, the scales told a story of a car that should not be handling well. Last week’s damage was starting to rear it’s ugly head.

B.J. managed to make it through the qualifying heat, though the car was handling very poorly. The grid was set for the feature event and B.J. rolled out seventh. B.J. remained patient through the first ten laps of the race as there was a lot of rough racing all around. On lap 13, the caution flew for debris on the track. At this point, B.J. had worked his way to fifth. When the race resumed, B.J. chased the leaders of #9 Gary Grubisa, #2 Joey Porciello, #57 Bill Fiske and the #25 Scott Bonney. Bonney and Porciello were in a tight battle for position and B.J. was watching and waiting for something to give. On lap 27, it would be Bonney’s tire that would give and bring out another caution. B.J. was now running third. Staying with the leaders on the ensuing restart, B.J. was en route to a top three finish. Late in the race, B.J. was unable to hold off the charge of Charlie Rousseau and slipped to fourth at the checkers.

In post race inspection, Rousseau was disqualified for a rules infraction. This moved the #10 of B.J Piekarski back to his first podium finish, in third place.

Despite the adversity of a heavily damaged car a week ago and an ill-handling car on Friday night, the PBJ Motorsports is very happy with the progress of the driver and the team in only its third week of action at NASCAR’s Lee USA Speedway.