CONCORD, N.C. – “For being turned twice and having a broken header, this was a pretty good night.”
Those were the optimistic words of 15-year-old INEX legends racing pro division racer Alex Murray after bringing his Shamrock Auto Care No. 22 home eighth in the second of two features he ran on Tuesday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. He finished tenth in the first feature earlier in the evening.
Making his debut in the pro division, Murray fought a tight race car early in the day through qualifying, but his team corrected the problem for the second 25-lap race of the night.
Lady luck just didn’t cooperate.
He got spun on lap five and then a header broke in the motor on lap 15 and he got turned again as well, hampering what could have been a top five finish for the outgoing racer, who was also interviewed on the Performance Motorsports Network’s Motorsports Madness show, broadcast live from the track on Monday evening.
“If you just look at the finishes it doesn’t look like we did very good tonight,” Alex said. “But I look at it like we learned a lot about the drivers I will be racing against in pro and I think we were capable of a top five finish in the second race but we just had some bad luck. We knew going into the shootout that we were going to be challenged and I know we’ll get better and better each race. We ran better tonight than our finish showed, especially in the second race.”
Elaborating on the special two-race week, Murray said, “They race on Monday and Tuesday the first and last weeks of the series. Every other week we just practice on Monday and race Tuesday. But, our feature race got rained out last night so we had to run it tonight. That’s why we had two races today instead of the usual one.”
When asked if he felt like the pro division was tougher than he anticipated, he was quick to shake his head no. “We were expecting pro to be tough. That’s why we moved up. I want to race against the toughest competition I can because that’s going to make me sharper. I’m trying to get to NASCAR and I cannot be prepared to compete at that level unless I challenge myself as much as possible on my way up the ladder. I’m excited about the next eight races and how much improvement in myself and our race car we are going to make.”