April 13, 2008

For Immediate Release

USA Stock car racing is popular for one big reason...

Friday April 11 saw young Australian Dane Rudolph line up for his second race start in the Whelen All American Series at ACE Speedway in Altamahaw North Carolina in the USA. Driving the number 18 Chevrolet from Sellers Racing, the meeting started well with the regions weather improving from the previous weeks wash out with rain.

Starting from the front row for the first time in his to date still very short oval track career, Rudolph was full of confidence, with a few mid week changes to the card showing the desired improvement in speed, setting up the weekend of promise.

Then came turn 3 on lap 1 of the scheduled 75 lap distance. Dane positioned nicely in 2nd place through turns 1 and 2, running down the back stretch two cars wide on the inside is usually pretty tight on the best of days, but when 4th place tries to make it three wide on entry into turn 3, the math's did not add up. With Rudolph in the middle of the 3 wide sandwich it is really only hope that will get you through, but on this occassion hope went away and Dane was turned around in front of the chasing pack. Some heave impacts from the rest of the field ensured that was far as the number 18 Chevy was going to go for the meeting.

When Dane phoned back to Australia, I could hear loud noises in the background, so my first question was, "is that the race going on in the background?", a quick "Yes" was the response, so you know it is never going to be a good conversation from that point.

Suprisingly though Dane was very upbeat about the meeting, he still felt very confident with how the year was going, he was impressed with the early speed shown by the car, and is looking forward to the next event in two weeks time. The car suffered only superficial damage, despite the heavy impact into the drivers door. "it really shows how well built these cars are when you can have impacts like that and get away injury free" said Dane following the accident.

USA Stock Car racing is known as a high excitement heavy contact sport, and drags the fans in by the hundreds of thousands almost every night of the year, with most fans looking to see some of the big hits, so the little Aussie from the Central Coast of NSW gave the fants at ACE something to chat about for their respective car journey's home on Friday night.

The team will repair the car, and most likely give it a shakedown run prior to the next even just to make sure there is not unexpected damage.

With 1 finish from 2 starts, Rudolph will be looking to get back into the swing of it as soon as possible, but clearly looking to improve the finish rate for the rest of the season. "There is a long way to go in the year, 19 more races I think, and these things happen to all drivers at least once a year, hopefully I got mine out of the way early in the season" continue an upbeat Rudolph prior to heading back home to Virginia.

With the next Race Meeting scheduled for April 25, all Australians will recognize that date as an important date in Australia's military history, so the Dane Rudolph Motorsports team earlier in the year approached the Returned Services League of Australia in an effort to gain permission to run a tribute scheme in recognition of this important event. This permissions has been granted so the guys will prepare this care this week and we will sent out some photos once it has been completed.