20th Place Finish for John Salemi in the All-Star Showdown
Rochester, NH (10/22/06) The 2006 NASCAR Busch East Series season came to a conclusion with Saturday night’s running of the Toyota All-Star Showdown in Irwindale, CA. The annual Showdown is a non-points event that puts the top fifteen drivers from the Busch East and Autozone West Series on the track together. For East Series driver John Salemi, the race was a difficult conclusion to a season that saw many ups and downs for the Nashua, NH driver. Handling and motor problems both plagued the #15 team over the course of the weekend and relegated John to a 20th place finish in the biggest race of the season.
John and the #15 Waste Management/BG Environmental/Dennis Ciotti Racing Products team headed west earlier in the week in preparation for the weekends events. Practice for the Showdown began on Friday afternoon with a tight racecar for Salemi. “We were tight from the beginning of practice,” recalled John. “We made a couple of adjustments in the first session and got the car a little better, but we really needed more practice laps to sort the handling out.”
Shortly into the second, and final, practice session before Friday night’s qualifying races, engine problems took over on the #15 car. “The motor locked up on us and there wasn’t a whole lot that we could do,” said John. “I got about 10 minutes of practice in that second session before we started unbolting everything and getting ready to make the swap.” Salemi was forced to use the remaining practice time helping the crew put the backup motor in the car. “We really had to scramble because the qualifying races were going to be run later on in the night.”
As the sun set in Southern California, the team finished getting the new motor in the car, without much time to spare. The #15 car rolled through inspection about an hour before the qualifying races were set to begin.
John climbed into the car not really knowing what to expect and took the green from the outside of the front row in the first qualifying heat. “Things got interesting quickly out there in our race,” said John. Salemi took the lead on the first lap and had a lot of pressure from behind immediately after his pass.
On the second lap, he was involved in an incident on the front straight that ended with multiple wrecked cars and a red flag. “The 18 car came up the track, clipped the left front of my car and went spinning into the inside wall of the track opening. I would never want anything like that to happen to any driver, but there was not a lot I could do. If I had moved any higher, I would have been in the wall.”
When the green flag came back out, it was apparent that John had picked up a tire rub on the left front from the contact on lap two. Salemi brought the car to the pits, for the crew to assess the damage. At that time, NASCAR instructed the #15 team that they were finished for the night and would not be allowed to return to the race. John was handed a 23rd place starting spot for Saturday night’s main event.
The plan for the first 100 laps in the Showdown was to survive and be there at the end. Salemi was able to accomplish just that, but not without fighting handling problems on his car. ‘We were really tight all night long,” recalled Salemi. “We pitted a bunch of time under yellow, but just couldn’t seem to get a handle on the car.”
At the halfway point, the crew topped off the fuel, put on four fresh tires and made another adjustment for the final 50-lap run. Unfortunately, the changes and tires were of no help to Salemi and he continued to fight the car on the racetrack. “The new tires did not do as much as we thought we would,” said John.
While avoiding a few major incidents on the track, John was able to survive the race and brought the #15 car home with a 20th place finish. Overall, it was an uneventful finish to the season for Salemi and the crew.
“It was a tough night out there. It seemed that none of the changes over the course of the night helped us. We really could have used more practice laps before these races so we could try some changes and get it handling better. That’s the way it goes. We are going to work hard over the winter and get things going in the right direction for next season.”
