Stewart Friesen had a heavy workload coming into the weekend with the Bob Hibert Sportswear Short Track Super Series, NASCAR CRAFTSMAN® Truck Series and the 63rd running of the Eastern States 200 at Orange County Fair Speedway.
That’s a lot of practice, qualifying and traveling for the No. 44 and 52 Halmar Racing driver.
Starting off the weekend with the 50 lap Hard Clay Finale Feature at Orange County Fair Speedway on Thursday night in the pole position after the redraw, the Sprakers, NY driver would hold the lead for 4 laps until Matt Sheppard drove by him and took the lead on the restart.
“I drew one and said, ‘This is gonna be tough, a lot of speed behind us there.”
Stewart added, “I picked the bottom on the restart (lap four) and Matt (Sheppard) got a good launch in the brown there and I was kicking myself the rest of the time there.”
Fortunately for Friesen, heavy lap traffic would be a benefit to him and on Lap 32, the Halmar Racing driver shot around the car of Sheppard and left him in the dust after that.
Even with scoring his 47th win in the Short Track Super Series and winning the $10,000 purse, Friesen had no time to spare as he was headed to Homestead-Miami Speedway for NASCAR CRAFTSMAN® Truck Series practice and qualifying.
Finishing the practice session, the No. 52 Halmar International Racing Toyota was seventh fastest overall and looking forward to qualifying.
Friesen would qualify in the 12th position for the Baptist Health 200 on Saturday October 26th at Homestead-Miami Speedway
With the green flag in the air, Friesen would work his way up into the top ten by the middle of the second stage.
Having a solid day at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Friesen would finish the day in sixth place.
Even with it being his fifth top ten of the season, Friesen still wasn’t completely happy with his performance.
“Yeah, we could fire off on the race start and the restarts really good but were just too draggy on our runs. But on the really long run there, we didn’t fall off and had a really good package underneath it. We’ll take a sixth (-place finish).”
Once again, Friesen would be back on his way to Middletown, N.Y. for the last of his races of the weekend.
Since he missed qualifying for the running of the historic 63rd Annual Eastern States Weekend, Friesen would use a past winner’s provisional to enter the race and would start in the 40th place. The very last spot in the lineup.
That being said, Friesen had a lot of work to do, and he was very successful at that.
Working though the field by the time he had reached Lap 50; Friesen had moved up 34 spots to take over the sixth position.
Multiple cautions helped him to improve his position on the track, but it was clear that the field was in trouble as the No. 44 car had picked off the others one by one but on Lap 80 Friesen would tag the wall.
Unbeknownst to him, his right rear tire had gotten some damage on that incident and on Lap 90, the caution flag would wave for Friesen.
Coming to pit road for gas and fuel at this time played out well for the Halmar driver as the mid-race break would be at Lap 100 and it didn’t look like Friesen would have to come back to pit road and would restart third.
“We got rolling in the first hundred; I didn’t know where we were and then all of a sudden, we were like sixth, went up there, smacked the fence, cut the tire down but it worked out” said a surprised Friesen. With the waving of the green flag for the last 100 laps, Friesen challenged for the lead, took it and never looked back.
By Lap 145 Friesen had lapped every car on the track up to the 12th place. Even with several more cautions no one could catch Friesen, and he would take the checkered flag and the $22,000 purse and trophy.
“We got a new tire on, got gas and we were able to cruise for the second hundred.”
Good thing for Friesen as luck was clearly on his side because as he came across the start finish line, “It broke something at the very end right after the checkered, driveshaft or something.”
The winning driver further added, “I want to apologize to a couple of the lapped drivers, the wall, Frank Cozze; there were a couple of tight moments.”
Clearly pleased with his team’s performance, Stewart Friesen had nothing but praise for them. “We’ve worked on our program all year to try and keep up. We hit on something and learned some stuff at Oswego and used this morning to try some more stuff and dial it in.”
Next up for Stewart Friesen will be the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway, The Zip Buy Now, Pay Later 200 on Friday November1. 2024 at 6pm E.T.
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