Alex Murray Breaks Bad Luck Streak With Solid Fourth Place Finish In Bojangles Summer Shootout Round 7 at Charlotte Motor Speedway
CONCORD, N.C. - Alex Murray, 15, of Concord broke his streak of bad luck Tuesday night in round 7 of the Bojangles Summer Shootout Series at Charlotte Motor Speedway, charging his way to a fourth place finish in the legends pro division on the 1/4-mile track.
His career best shootout finish came after he was forced to pull out of the last three races early due to mechanical problems on his sharp looking Shamrock Auto Care No. 22.
Last week, the motor blew, forcing the team to change to their spare motor, which had just been rebuilt, for Tuesday's race.
When the race ended, you could find nothing but smiles in the Murray team's garage.
"This has been a great day," Alex grinned. "I can't thank my family and all of my supporters enough for believing in me all through the first six races when we were struggling. This Pro class is so competitive that almost all of us are within a tenth of a second on lap time, so you really have to race hard to pass cars. Tonight, we had the car and motor to do that and to take advantage when things fall our way."
Alex continued on, discussing details of the day.
"We didn't qualify as well as we want to but that was my fault. I overdrove the car and was thinking too much. We started sixth and I got caught on the outside and got shuffled back to tenth or eleventh on the first lap before I could get down to the bottom. I got stuck behind Reid Wilson for a few laps before I finally was able to get by him and then start running down the rest of the pack. I needed a caution to get me back up into the mix, and that happened with 11 laps left. I was able to use the driver "choose" cone to restart sixth. Then on the last lap (Jared) Irvan got loose and slid up into (Evan) Swilling and we were able to get by those two to finish fourth. It was a good battle the last bunch of laps with all of us right there tight. It just felt good to have the speed to run with the leaders finally and show what we could do."
Pausing for a minute to think about the rest of the series, Alex reaffirmed his excitement for what's ahead.
"Now that we seem to have the motor situation under control and the car is running right, I'm really looking forward to the last three races because we can work on making me and the car faster instead of having to fix mechanical problems. It's hard to work on building speed when the car isn't working right. I"m glad I could give my team something to smile about tonight, because they've really worked hard for the whole series to get us to this point."
Next Monday, July 20th is the usual Monday night practice session at the track, while qualifying and racing get underway on Tuesday afternoon, July 21st for round 8 of the Bojangles Summer shootout Series at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
If you can't make it out to the speedway to watch Alex on Tuesday night, check out www.goprn.com for information on the internet pay-per-view video broadcast for this summer's racing, or follow Alex Murray Racing on Facebook, or his website (www.alexmurrayracing.com) to keep up with the latest news.