News Director 
Story By: CLAYTON JOHNS / FOWL MOOD RACING – BRIGHTON, ONT – Phil Potts raced from a starting spot outside the top-10 to a fifth-place finish during the Pro Late Model Feature on Saturday night at Brighton Speedway. It was Potts’ second straight top-five finish to start the season in the Vanderlaan/Brighton Recycling/Indewey Excavating No.29.
Potts started the night with a fourth-place finish in his heat, enough to qualify him for the Feature inversion. The only restart of the race came on lap four where Potts used the opportunity to jump ahead three spots to fifth. On lap 18, Potts moved past Terry Hunt for the fourth spot, but later relinquished it to Adam Turner and settled for fifth. Despite the strong effort, Potts felt he could have earned a better finish.
“I wacked an implement tire early on and it changed the down force on the nose because the car skated bad after that,” Potts said. “We came home with a fifth-place finish. I’m not happy, but we’ll take it. We’re not happy with fifth place by any means because we had a second- or third-place car.”
The racetrack threw a handful of curveballs at drivers throughout the night. What appeared to be a dusty track as a late afternoon sun shined over the track, turned out to be a lightning-quick track come Feature time.
“Huge (moisture), a lot more than I thought there was, especially on the bottom,” Potts said of the fast, moisture-laden track. “If you could hold your car to the bottom, the thing was a rocket ship. I could the first 10 laps, my car was great, and then it went away.
Potts experimented with a couple of different lines, including the outside lane, but found the bottom was best when he could get the car to race where he liked.
“The racetrack stayed really good on the bottom,” Potts explained. “The top was rough, just because everybody had furled it up like a field. The bottom had so much forward drive. The middle was slick, which I normally like, but there was too much forward drive off the bottom to run through the middle.”
While Potts is content with his top-five finished, he is clearly not satisfied. The Fowl Mood Race Team will continue with their usual tear down and begin preparing for next Saturday’s event.
“We’ll go right back to base one again,” Potts said. “We do every week. We start back at standard and go from there. We’ll do exactly the same thing next week. We’ll go over everything front to back and we’ll be better next week.”
Potts’ 2017 title defense at Brighton Speedway continues next Saturday, May 20 presented by Pinty’s Delicious Foods, First Place Trailers and Gerow Propane. For a full schedule of events, visit www.brightonspeedway.ca.
