The Coors Light #79 was quick at Ace.
"The biggest thing right now is getting seat time and getting laps. It’s also getting accustom to what David (Hill, Crew Chief of the #79) likes and what I like so we can be stronger as a team. We are just out there getting seat time. This is really only my second full race with them between rainouts, Mansfield, the television thing at Loudon (when the race was cut short due to television time constraints). The only full race I’ve raced was Stafford and this Southern Tour race.
"It’s all about getting out thee and getting your body useed to the grind. I thought there would be a couple of more cautions (Ace race only had 1 caution on lap 20 of the 150 lap race). I am not used to that. With 15-to-go they said I was just as fast as the leaders and the car started coming back to me. I just tried to get back up on the wheel and get whatever I could there at the end. I wish the car was a little more free in the center because that is where I think they were hurting us. That comes with working together as a team. We’ll try to get some good finishes and get our confidence up so we can have a good finish to the year."
Pitkat has another busy weekend ahead of him, but that's just how the young racer wants it. He'll be back in the SK Modified and Late Model at Stafford Friday night, then he'll run both the Sunoco Modified and the Whelen Mod entry in Thompson's "Modified Mania" event on Sunday.
"Six races in six days. That’s definitely the most I’ve ever ran. If we had finished every race it would have been 700 laps. That would have been cool to do all of that. "
Come Monday after such a busy weekend, Pitkat still had enough in the tank to score a fifth-place finish in the SMT race at Ace Speedway, his first-ever run with the Southern Tour competitors. A long, 130-lap green flag run to conclude the race was about all that kept Pitkat from an even better finish.
Woody was one busy guy over the last six days. (51 Photo)
It all kicked off Wednesday night, when Pitkat wheeled the Coors Light #79 to a 17th-place finish in an Open Modified race at Seekonk Speedway (MA), fighting handling issues. Friday night, Pitkat finished third in the SK Modified feature at Stafford Motor Speedway (CT), but his five-race Stafford win streak came to an end. Pitkat also finished 17th in the Late Model feature after competing for the win.
From there, Pitkat hopped into the Hillbilly Racing #79 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour machine, where he finished 25th at Martinsville Speedway (VA) after mechanical problems Saturday night, but Pitkat bounced back on Monday, Labor Day, with a fifth-place run in his first-ever start on the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour at Ace Speedway in North Carolina.
"I’m pretty tired because it was a long week," said Pitkat, who remains atop the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series National Points standings with his strong finish in the SK at Stafford Friday night. "This was probably our best run with the Tour car (at Ace). We qualified well at Seekonk on Wednesday but got real loose in the race. We finished second at Thompson on Thursday so that was good. Stafford, I finished third.
"Saturday I went to Martinsville where I learned I have to do better at time trials. That is why we are doing as many races as we can. I have to learn how to be fast in practice and in time trials. When we get in the race and I get 10 laps into it I can drive the thing right to the front. We timed 28th at Martinsville and got involved in one of those wrecks that if I had qualified better I might not have been in. I was sort of disappointed because I wanted to do all 300 laps. I took Sunday off to rest and was back at it at Ace on Monday.
If it's got four wheels and an engine, Woody Pitkat will race it somewhere. He'll travel from Massachusetts to Virginia to North Carolina just to get that racing fix. That's why running five races all along the East Coast in the span of six days was nothing the young Pitkat couldn't handle.
The stats from the weekend show that Pitkat wasn't just busy, but also successful. He scored three top-five finishes in the six races, with a weekend's best finish of second in the Sunoco Modified at Thompson International Speedway (CT) on Thursday.
Impressive Stats for Woody's Six-Races-In-Six-Days Stretch
Three Top-Five Runs Highlight Pitkat's Busy Weekend
