Story by: Langley Austin — [email protected]
Hudson, NC(April 16, 2009) ~ The weekend of April 3rd and 4th was a tough weekend to be a race winner in the Late Model Stock Car division and while none was tougher than the tech that Alex Yontz endured at Caraway Speedway, Jesse LeFevers had a long night of his own.
After winning the season opener at Tri-County Motor Speedway in Hudson, NC on Friday, April 3rd everything seemed right for the young driver who also kicked off his 2009 season at Hickory Motor Speedway with a win.
However when he rolled his car in the tech area the mood changed as the TCMS officials began to look over his car with a fine tooth comb and eventually as we all know now, he was disqualified for the boosters in his carburetor being eight thousands too high.
LeFevers went from being on the top of the food chain to being just a piece a meat thrown out to a pack of wolves … though when we talked with him about the whole situation he was upset, but knew that the rules infraction in which he was disqualified for, didn’t get him the victory.
“What are you going to do. They seemed like to me that they were dead set on finding something illegal on our car,” said LeFevers. “They checked the tach, distributor, broke down all four wheels and we were told to bring tools to tear the car apart. They found the boosters to be eight thousands high and they kicked us out … that’s the same carb I won with at Hickory and all five races last year at Tri-County, it even had the UARA stamps on it from where we run the race there last year, it was legal then and all of sudden it wasn’t anymore.”
For LeFevers the disqualification was devastating considering that he was going to attempt to run for the championship at both Hickory and Tri-County. The disqualification realistically knocks him out of contention for the title at TCMS, but the tech process he endured there made his team put in extra hours on Friday night in preparation for running Hickory on Saturday night.
Obviously the tech didn’t hurt him too much as he went to Hickory on Saturday night after his crew spent all night long putting his car back together and qualified on the pole with a borrowed carburetor and went on to finish third despite having a collapsed spring.
LeFevers is now content just to set his sights on winning the title at Hickory, but I had to ask if he would go back to Tri-County.
“The boosters didn’t win the race for us — we’re probably not going to go there full-time, but I will go back and prove to them that we can win no matter what. They let me keep my track record from qualifying, I guess that’s the silver lining.”
LeFevers disqualification gave way to a victory for RA Brown and although he didn’t necessarily think that LeFevers should have been thrown out, he was all too happy to get the trophy in the end.
“The tech man there came up from Pro-Cup and the carburetor was wrong, but I’ve found with these crate engines that you can’t really gain that much from the carburetor especially with boosters,” said Brown of LeFevers disqualification. “It was wrong though, they called him wrong, but what I don’t understand is why he would have been wrong there … it didn’t help him.”
Brown said he had a good car during the race, but when Ty Dillon, who was making his Late Model Stock Car debut, missed a shift his car got knocked out of whack.
“We got into Ty Dillon when he missed a shift and bent some stuff up like a ball joint, upper a-arm and some suspension. If this hadn’t have happened I think we could have gave Jesse(LeFevers) a run for his money, but I’m not sure we could have beat him, he was on his game for sure.”
Brown certainly would have rather taken the checkered flag, celebrated in victory lane and even had his picture taken with trophy queen, but for him it’s still a win.
“A gift is a gift … I’ll take it. I mean to win a race in these cars against this good of competition is exceptionally tough and my name will be in the record books for winning this race, so I’ll take it.”
After getting the season off to such a good start Brown is having to reconsider his part time schedule and as of right now will try to run the next four to five races and see where he stacks up in the points and maybe try to go for the championship.
“If we can run good the next four or five races we’ll be in the running for the title and I can’t pass that up. I hope Jesse stays and races with us all year, but I can understand if he doesn’t. He’s a great driver and I love to race side by side with him and to race him for the championship would be fun, I hate to see what happened to him.”
A great night for LeFevers turned into a tough night for him and his team and a tough night for Brown with the damage to his car turned into a cause for celebration as the trophy will be his forever. Lets hope that LeFevers can come back and race hard with Brown this week and show everyone that the carburetor had nothing to do with his victory and give the fans another great race.
