9/21/2016
Sam Hafertepe Jr
Sam Hafertepe Jr. – Charge at the Canadian Nationals!
Sam Hafertepe Jr. – Charge at the Canadian Nationals!
(Bill W) September 21, 2016 – Sam Hafertepe Jr. and the Keith Dobbs #15H team kept at it last weekend at the Canadian Nationals, and it paid off with a run from 19th to sixth in the finale. The Sunnyvale, Texas driver will be back across the border this weekend as he tackles the three-night Jesse Hockett/Daniel McMillin Memorial at Lucas Oil Speedway near Wheatland, Missouri. Sam won the feature event there with the Lucas Oil ASCS National Series back in June during Speedweek.
A week ago Sunday, Sam tried his luck at the Cole Cup at Utica-Rome Speedway in Vernon, New York. “We started early in the day, and it got so slick…I mean we were running twenty second laps,” he says. “It just wasn’t our cup of tea, because we really hadn’t raced a track like that all year.”
Last Friday, at Ohsweken Speedway in Ontario, the Canadian Nationals got underway. To qualify for Twin Features, drivers had to finish in the top five of their heat. Sam finished sixth in his heat. “We really just didn’t work on our car enough,” he says. “It was really our fault that we didn’t get the car ready. We practiced on Thursday and between that and Friday, we learned enough to get our car dialed in a lot better on Sunday.”
Saturday’s finale was postponed to Sunday. Sam won the Canadian Nationals in 2011. “We don’t normally race tracks like that,” he says. “Though I’ve been successful there in the past, we haven’t raced a lot of tracks with those qualities this year. It just took us a little longer to get the car where we needed it. By the end of the weekend, we had it figured out.”
After qualifying second quick overall Sunday, Sam finished fourth in the heat, one spot out of a transfer to the finale. “We just kind of missed it in the heat race a little,” he says. “We missed the transfer and struggled a bit. We went back to the drawing board for the B. We were able to start third there and win that.”
The tuning continued and Sam started the finale inside row ten. “We still didn’t feel like we were where we needed to be, so we kept working on the car,” he says. “We were looking at notes from other places we’d been. We hit on a little something in the feature. We were able to drive up to sixth. By the end of the race, we were one of the faster cars…we just ran out of time. To do what we did with that caliber of cars, we were satisfied with it.”
He is excited about the weekend in Wheatland. “I’m looking forward to it,” says Sam. “The format doesn’t really bother me. It’s fair enough to work for us if we do our job. If we do what we’ve been doing all year long, we have a good shot at locking into the show (top eight). Plus, if you do have a little trouble one night, you have another one to maybe make up for it. Hopefully, everything goes well, and we have the speed we had there during Speedweek.”
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Sam would like to thank Highway 79 Collision Center, the Sparks Family, Kiebler & Sons Lawn and Landscaping, Keizer Aluminum Wheels, Champion Oil, NAPA Auto Parts of Franklin and Sherwin Williams.
Photo: Sam races with Scott Kreutter at Ohsweken (Dale Calnan – ImageFactor.ca Photo)
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Monroe, IA USA