Kingsport Speedway
June 3, 2011

Friday night, I was back at one of my favorite tracks, Kingsport! I was ready for to see how the race would go coming off of the fifth place finish last time. Like my last Kingsport race, the car was great in practice. I was a little nervous about qualifying but the car handled great and I ended up sixth, my best qualifying effort yet. This track is hard to run the outside groove so once I got to the inside, I was on the move to the front. I got all the way up to third when the car started getting loose and I dropped back to fifth position. We decided to come down pit road under one of the cautions to make a change but by the time I got back out on the track, the leaders were coming to the green. It took them quite a while for them to run me down but with the car still being real loose, I got lapped and there were no other cautions after that so I ended up finishing ninth. There was no doubt that I had a fast car and even with it not handling well, I was still keeping up with the leaders. After looking into the car more after the race, we found out that there was a mechanical failure with the rear end, causing the car to be loose. Next week, I'm scheduled to run at Hickory. It's been quite a while since I have ran there and I'm definitely looking forward to getting back to the track! I would like to thank God, Revolution Racing, Max Siegel, John Story, Jefferson Hodges, Danny Johnson, Toyota, TRD, U.S. Army, WIX Filters, Sunoco, and Freightliner for making this opportunity possible!
Tayla Orleans