FLOYD, VA :: Daryn Cockram has three wins on the season and he feels good about his chances of his fourth coming at Southern National Motorsports Park’s Thanksgiving Classic on Sunday.

Cockram raced at Southern National back in July and had a top-two performance going before a couple of on-track altercations with eventual track champion Haley Moody knocked him out of contention for the win.

“In July, when we unloaded, I feel like we had a really good chance,” Cockram said.  “Anything could happen so I’m not going to say we would have won.  That’s part of racing; you wipe it off and go on with the next one.  [Rusty] Daniels, he won it that night, we gave him a fit for 15-20 laps on the outside and other than Lemons, you don’t see a lot of people run on the outside there.”

Now, he’s going back to Southern National with hopes of being able to score the victory against some of the toughest competition he has faced all season – such as Joey Throckmorton, Rusty Daniels, Andrew Grady, Brian Pembelton, Clay Jones and others.  His past performance at Southern National as well as his performances at South Boston and Motor Mile this season gives the Floyd, Virginia plenty of reasons to be confident ahead of the Thanksgiving Classic.

“Every one of those drivers you’ve named, they’re top dogs anywhere they go but we’ve run door-to-door with them and we’ve got just as good a car as anyone else,” Cockram said.  “It’s just keeping our nose clean for 150 laps.”

One of the key factors in Sunday’s 150-lap race will be tire management, something Cockram feels should be right up his alley.

“Tire management is going to be huge with the tire rule they’ve put out for this race,” Cockram said.  “You have to be selective and conserve for the first 75 laps.  You also have to have a well-balanced racecar to run hard but run conservatively.”

Cockram ran several races at Franklin County Speedway in Callaway, Virginia this season where he scored two wins.  Franklin County races on scuff tires, much like the big 75-lap race at Southern National Motorsports Park earlier this month.  Cockram said those races give him experience and give him an edge in having the car setup to handle properly.

“It’s about the same and that’s one of the main reasons we went to Franklin County the past couple weeks is to put our cars on scuff tires and just get used to the scuff tires again on the car and get the handling to stay under it consistently.”

Along with his two wins at Franklin County, Cockram inherited a victory in a Limited Sportsman race at Motor Mile Speedway back on May 31st after Preston McGhee failed post-race technical inspection.  Cockram said the 2014 season was one of his best.

“If you look at it, we’ve led more laps this year than we’ve ever led.  We were in the top-five all the time.”