Lavender looks forward to Nashville

By: | SCNow
Published: July 16, 2008

Hartsville’s Jody Lavender had a good run in the NASCAR Camping World East Series race at the Thompson, Conn. Speedway on Saturday night.

It was the first time he had seen the track and with less than 20 laps of practice, he qualified tenth. He stayed in the top-10 all night, and with two laps remaining, he had moved into fifth place.

But a caution flag came out, and the restart dropped him back to sixth.

After the race Lavender said, “We had a pretty good car tonight. It was still tight, but we were able to run up front. We cut a tire in practice which hurt us. If we had more practice I think we could have made the car better, but the competition in the division is so competitive we have to be 100 percent every race.

“We don’t have the resources some of the drivers have, but this JBR team will continue to work hard.”

Three of the cars ahead of him were DEI cars and one from Joe Gibbs racing.

Lavender also moved up to ninth place in the points standings after missing one race. The next race in the NASCAR Camping World Series division is in Nashville, Tenn., on Saturday, July 19.

Lavender is looking forward to the NASCAR Camping World East Series race at the Nashville Speedway on Saturday night. The race will be broadcast live on the HDNET channel at 7:30 p.m. “Most of the tracks we have raced on this year are tracks I have never seen before race day including a road course,” Lavender said. “We haven’t been able to test this year, and it has hurt us.

“The competition in this series is very competitive, and testing is very important to stay competitive. We get less than two hours of practice on race day, which doesn’t leave time to test much.

“I look forward to going to Nashville because I have seen the track before and raced there approximately five years ago. Maybe this will help us.”

Lavender is ninth in the points standings and has competed in all of the races this year except one.

He drives for JBR Motorsports in Maine. For more information, go to www.jodylavender.com, www.jbrracing.com.