Gresham Confident In NHMS NASCAR K&N Pro Series Bid Friday
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
GRIFFIN, GA (June 23, 2010) – Max Gresham was making just his fourth-career NASCAR K&N Pro Series start when he sat on the outside pole and finished a solid ninth in the Heluva Good! Fall 125 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last September.
Now – Gresham is now a ‘seasoned veteran’ of the New Hampshire one-mile oval as he and his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota return Friday for a second career run at NHMS and a shot at a third NASCAR K&N Pro Series East Victory this season.
“I expect to continue the kind of strong performances that we have been producing," said Gresham, who won K&N events earlier this year at South Boston (VA) Speedway and Iowa Speedway. "Now that I have been to New Hampshire, I’ll be able to better relate the track to the crew. It’ll be tough because there are a lot of guys who have a ton of experience there, but we’re still looking to have a great run.”
Last September, Gresham quickly adapted to the flat, one-mile New Hampshire ‘Magic Mile’ – the largest track he had been to at that point of his career – wheeling his JGR Camry to a lap of 30.052 seconds (126.740 average miles per hour) in qualifying. That was good enough for an outside pole starting position.
“That surprised me a little because of how I did it,” said Gresham. “I made a mistake – I overdrove the corner going into Turn One. At least I thought I did. I thought I was going in the wall. I was surprised to make the center of the corner. I knew when I got there I was going to be okay. Sure, the outside pole surprised me, but how can anything surprise you when you have a great team like Joe Gibbs Racing behind you?”
Gresham ran as high as third before a slight bump up well into the event dropped the now Woodward Academy (College Park, GA) senior student to ninth in the final running order.
“I came off Turn 2 on one of those late restarts and we got a right-front tire rub,” said Gresham. “It was pretty crazy out there and I must have gotten into someone. I could hardly feel it, but at a track this size, that can make a big difference. I hate it that we fell back a couple of positions at the end, but we came out of it okay. It was still a solid Top-10 finish, but we were way better than that.”
Gresham is also coming off of a less than anticipated 17th-place finish in the most recent NASCAR K&N Pro Series East event at Martinsville. His Gresham Motorsports Park/World Crown 300 sponsored Toyota suffered a cut tire just 28 laps into the race. The green-flag pit stop to swap out tires put Gresham two laps to the leaders, an insurmountable disadvantage especially with the race was later short-circuited by rain.
“I really don’t worry about it at all,” Gresham stated when asked about past outcomes. “We’ve got 10 races, that was just one of them. We have six more to go and our focus is on doing the best we can at New Hampshire this weekend. We’ ll take on the other five when we get to them. We just want to get the job done.”
Gresham will take the green flag in the New England 125 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East event Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time. The event will be telecast on SPEED on Thursday, July 1 at 6 p.m. ET.
For information about sponsorship of or partnering with Max Gresham, please contact Tony Gresham at tgresham@greshaminc.com
New Hampshire Race Facts
The Race: New England 125
The Place: New Hampshire Motor Speedway
The Date: Friday, June 25
The Time: 5 p.m. ET
TV Schedule: SPEED, July 1, 6 p.m. ET
Track Layout: 1.058-mile oval
Race Purse: $227,607