Bobby Grigas, III Ends Up 11th at New Hampshire
New Car Does Well, But Driver Knows They Can Do Better
Bobby Grigas had hoped that there would be a “one” in front of his number on the finishing order for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour race on Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. He got that wish – but unfortunately for him, he also got an extra “one” with it. Grigas finished 11th in the race – which wasn’t exactly what he had hoped for.
“After practice earlier this morning I thought we were going to have a decent car,” said Grigas. “Then lap one started out and then, I forget what lap it was, but the #90 [of Renee Dupuis] kind of spun out in front of me. I had no where to go because she was spinning right around in front of me. So that put us to the rear of the field.”
But the race was 100 laps long and Grigas didn’t give up.
“I was coming, trying to make my way up to the front a little bit, but we kind of messed up the car prior to the race. We over tightened it. I was just driving and hanging out, letting everything span out a little bit and then waiting to come down pit road. We had an awesome pit stop even when we got jammed in the pit area. We were just kind of riding it out and waiting until the last 20 laps because what happens in the Modified race is that everyone starts wrecking with like 50 to go or so. And then towards the end there is just one of those wild finishes.”
“Wild” was an understatement as Grigas watched Donny Lia, Ted Christopher and Todd Szegedy battle for the victory. Lia won while the other two wrecked – and Grigas got pulled into the mess.
“I saw Lia drop down to the bottom and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a Lia-Teddy show.’ And then Szegedy came out of nowhere and crossed them both up so it was kind of wild. The happy end there when they started flying through the air, the spotter told me to go low, low, low, low and then they came shooting across low. When I locked up the brakes, I ended up spinning around and bouncing off the wall. That was kind of like one of those Days of Thunder things like just keep your foot in it and go straight and move up the track. We had a good finish going.”
Immediately after the race, Grigas was hoping for the best when the race results were released.
“I have my fingers crossed but I think I only lost one or two spots. I think I was hopefully ninth or tenth. We’ve been struggling a little bit earlier this season and the team did a great job today and I wish we had a better finish, but hopefully it wasn’t all that bad.”
So all in all, Grigas was satisfied with a near-top 10 result.
“We came here with that brand new 09 Troyer that people have been struggling to get them to go. We had a pretty decent car…I mean we had the fastest car at the end of that race. That was a bonus in our court. After the first couple of races we’ve been struggling, we got something to go that people at Troyer have been struggling to get to go. Hopefully the ball keeps rolling and we keep doing better.”
Grigas’ next race on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour will come at Spencer Speedway on July 11th.
