KNOXVILLE, TN :: After a pair of top-five finishes over the weekend, Chad Finchum is amped up for Thursday night’s Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown at South Boston Speedway. The race will mark Finchum’s first career start at South Boston Speedway.
Finchum was invited to the race by virtue of his track championship at Kingsport Speedway. He enters the race fresh off a third place finish Friday night at Kingsport and a fourth place finish at Lonesome Pine Raceway.
“We qualified on the pole Friday and we were inverted to third,” Finchum said. “We ran a long green run in third. A late caution with seven to go and we had a tire going flat. We held on to finish third but it was a losing battle. Saturday, we just missed the setup. We were good in the first practice but it slowed a tenth in second practice. We didn’t qualify that well, started fourth and rode fourth all race. It was just follow the leader, we couldn’t do anything.”
Now, Finchum looks ahead to competing against the best in the business in Late Model Stock Car racing as well as elite NSACAR stars in Thursday night’s Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown. Finchum knows the competition and knows he will have some catching up to do when he gets to South Boston but is confident about his chances after having set the fast time in qualifying at Martinsville Speedway last October.
“It will be my first time at South Boston,” Finchum stated. “It will be a learning curve for our team to go there and to race against the best in the business. When we unload and we’re practicing tomorrow, we’ll be learning the track, getting the car set up while the local drivers will be fine tuning. We’re going to be behind the eight ball a little bit but it won’t slow us down. We out-qualified everybody at Martinsville and I think we can do the same at South Boston.”
The Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown will be held on Thursday, April 24th at South Boston Speedway in Virginia. Following that race, Finchum will race at Kingsport Speedway on Friday night, April 25th.
