Those hopes quickly faded away when Piekarski drew for his heat race starting position and drew the last spot. The bad luck didn’t stop there. As Piekarski went to fire up the Toyota of Nashua/Collision Centers of NH Late Model, the MSD Ignition box failed. As a result, Piekarski failed to make his qualifying heat and was relegated to trying to make the main event through the consolation race.

Starting last in the consolation race, Piekarski quickly moved through the pack in the outside groove. The car was handling very well and things were starting to turn around as Piekarski crossed the line at the checkers in fourth place.

With a guaranteed starting spot in the main event in the fifth position and a car that had just performed very well on the track, the team and driver were now encouraged for a solid outing in the Central Paving 100.

As the green flag flew, Piekarski gained two positions quickly and was running in the top three with his Merchants Rent-A-Car machine. Then another position was grabbed and Piekarski was chasing the leader for the next 30-laps. Caution flew over the field for an incident, which bunched the field up. The restart on lap 35 had Piekarski on the outside of the leader. On the ensuing restart, the handling went away as he tried to make a pass for the lead. Piekarski reported in to the crew that he felt as though the right rear tire was going down.

"The handling on the car deteriorated quickly," said Piekarski. "Up until that point, we were confident that at least a top five finish was possible and that we even had a shot at the win," continued Piekarski.

With the ill-handling car getting worse each lap, Piekarski dropped back in the running order and couldn’t pit knowing that he would fall off the lead lap. Piekarski waited for a caution and brought the car pit side to change to failing tire.

Piekarski was now looking at a full field of beaten up racing machines from the rear of the pack, but he was still confident that there was time to make up some positions.

"The race was rough," said Piekarski. "This is a tight track and there isn’t a lot of room out there. It’s almost like being in a pinball machine. If it wasn’t for the tire going down, we could have avoided the havoc," expressed Piekarski.

The green flag flew once again and the car was back to its solid form. Piekarski was picking off positions one by one. He was approaching the top ten when Sam Caron’s #07 got into Piekarski, burying car in the frontstretch wall. The wreck ended Piekarski’s race with a disappointing 17^th place finish.

"We had a much better car then the results show," said Piekarski. "The race is over and we will regroup for Oxford next week," closed Piekarski.

Piekarski continues to be to top competing Rookie on the ACT Tour and is currently 15^th in the championship point race.