ROUGEMONT, NC – Quin Houff bounced back from an early race spin in Saturday night’s Orange Blossom 300 only to have his strong performance derailed by a late race penalty.
Houff had a fast car all day, starting the race in the second position but, on the first lap of the race, Houff spun triggering a multi-car accident. Houff was able to rebound from that early race incident and found himself battling eventual race winner Christopher Bell for the lead in the mid-stages of the race.
As a series of cautions broke out, Houff and Bell played strategy on the restarts. That strategy went south for Houff on lap 92 when he was sent to the rear of the field for jumping the restart. Houff’s race went from bad to worse on lap 118 when he hit the wall in turn one. He was able to drive away from the incident but ended up finishing the race in 13th, one lap down.
“It’s just tough,” Houff said. “We had such a great racecar. To drive up through the field, running second, 20 laps left and just riding and kept having restarts, more restarts, red flags … I was playing with [Bell]. He was the class of the field. We were going to duke it out for the win for sure and it was going to be great for the fans. We were playing around with restarts. This is only my second race in a Super Late Model. I played around with restarts, got a great restart, went at the line, he burned his tires down and they called me black flagged because I jumped the restart, sent me to the back of the field and then, victim of a massacre at that point.”
Houff felt strongly that he had the best car in the field and could have won the race if not for the lap 92 penalty. Knowing he had a good car, all he can do is look ahead to upcoming CARS Tour races.
“We had a first place car, I believe, that’s now a wrecked racecar,” Houff stated. “It’s just one of those deals. We’ll go back, take what we have, we definitely have a great racecar to compete for the win every week, we just have to keep our heads straight.”
