Column By: MIKE TRAVERSE / RPW – MIDDLETOWN, NY – He wasn’t the fastest during the Big Block time trials on Friday, but he set a blistering pace during Saturday’s Race for the Pole event which set the top 12 starting positions for the 60th running of the Eastern States 200.
Stewart Friesen passed Friday’s fast timer Anthony Perrego at the halfway point of the 12 lap event and the Halmar #44 will be leading the field to green in the 200. Perrego finished 2nd and will share the front row with Friesen.
“The Halmar team has been working very hard. We have been fighting a couple of weird driveline issues this weekend. Hopefully we have that nailed down. Anthony was fast, but we moved to the middle and got past,” Friesen said.
“I think we were the second best car here, we’ll work on it,” said Perrego. “The car has been awesome since we unloaded it on Friday. He was just better than us in this race today.”
A look at the lap times from the event showed that Friesen’s fast lap was about 9/10th’s faster than anyone else in the race. A 200 lap race has a lot of twists and turns though. But Friesen has to feel good about today’s results.
The balance of the finishing order was Kenny Tremont 3rd, Jimmy Horton 4th, Billy Decker 5th, Tim McCreadie 6th, Mike Mahaney 7th, Matt Sheppard 8th, Dillon Steuer 9th, Tim Fuller 10th, Larry Wight 11th and tommy Meier 12th.