Jamey Caudill was fast all throughout practice and qualifying during Saturday’s Championship Auto Racing Series (CARS) X-1R Performance Products 300 at Southern National Motorsports Park but mechanical problems and a late race accident proved to be his undoing.  Now, Caudll is looking ahead to Orange County Speedway to get his season back on track.

Caudill started in the fourth position and ran up inside the top-five throughout much of the first half of Saturday night’s CARS Tour opener.  That was until mechanical problems caused his car to lose speed and eventually saw the veteran fade outside the top-10.  He was later involved in a wreck which relegated him to a 19th place finish.

“We rose pretty good trying to get ready there the past couple of weeks,” Cadill said.  “Right front ball joint backed out of the upper and got bound up on the spindle there.  We kind of shot ourselves in the foot.  We had a decent car.  Felt like we had a top-five car.  Not sure we were going to beat Deac or the 98 but think we would have been top-five.  We had some mechanical issues there brought on by myself and we’ll go back, regroup and see if we can get it right at Orange County.”

The veteran driver from Four Oaks, North Carolina said he would like to blame bad luck for the events leading up to a late race accident – but he says it was bad luck of his own creation.

“We were in the way there just trying to finish the race,” Caudill explained.  “We ended up three-wide getting into turn one and got turned around and messed up there off of turn two and had some body damage and suspension damage in part.  All of that was brought on by, you want to call it bad luck but sometimes you make your own luck and that’s what I did there.”

When asked if he could turn his season around at Orange County on April 18th, Caudill simply said, “I hope so”.

As of right now, Caudill does not have and immediate plans to race outside of the CARS Late Model Stock Tour though he may run some Late Model Stock Car races outside of CARS down the road.  Along with his own effort, Caudill has been helping Myatt Snider, who is also racing in the CARS Tour, and Haley Moody, who will make her NASCAR Whelen All-American Series (NWAAS) Division I debut at Southern National Motorsports Park on April 26th in the Jerry Moody Memorial.

Caudill’s next race will be the CARS Tour’s Orange Blossom 300 presented by The Grilling Store which will be held on April 18th at Orange County Speedway in Rougemont, North Carolina.