10th Place For Josh in Super Late Model Feature

LEWISBURG, TN - Josh Adkins punched above his weight class Friday night and grabbed a solid top 10 from the big boys. Friday, November 4th, saw Josh Adkins and the Mullinax Racing crew compete at Duck River Raceway Park in an Iron Man Late Model Series race with a 604 Crate engine.

The team knew that they were entering the race down 300 horse power to their competitors but spirits were high and pressure was low. The plan for the weekend was to have Josh use the Super Late Model race as a practice session of sorts and get the car ready for Saturday's 604 race, so not much was expected going in.

During Adkins's hot-lap session he struggled with a very tight race car that prevented him from getting the speed that would be needed to compete with the big motors. In the pits the team worked hard to find the problem and when qualifying came around they thought the problem would be solved.

The track was sending out two cars at a time during qualifying and Adkin's would be the second car of the two, going out 16th overall. While Josh had a very good first lap, his fellow qualifier did the opposite and got in the way of Adkins's second, and faster, lap. Having to avoid, and even pass, the other car likely caused Josh to loose a few hundredths of a second in time but he still qualified 15th overall with a 13.2 second lap.

Josh would go out 3rd in the first of two heat races where the top five would advance to the twenty two car feature event. By the time of the heat race the track started to slick off which was exactly what the team wanted in order to negate some of the power difference between Supers and Crates.

Adkins got off to a good start in the heat race, keeping his and even challenging for second until getting his momentum stopped by the car ahead pinching him in the bottom. Josh stayed in third and ran the second placeman back down but could not get around, finishing third in the car and making the show.

With a third place finish in the heat, Adkins would start 15th in the $5,000 to win feature race and the track was getting slicker and slicker. When Josh went out for the feature race he would be in the middle of a pack of cars with nearly twice the horsepower of him.

When the green flag dropped it did not take much time to show that Adkins was faster than the guys ahead of him. The lack of power actually played into the car's favor by allowing for more leeway on the dry slick track.

Josh moved up quickly, getting up to 13th by the caution on lap 7 in this 30 lap feature. He moved up to the middle lane and moved all the way up to 10th by the halfway point in the race.

Here he would stay for the rest of the race as he tried to close the gap between him and the two cars ahead of him, but he ran out of time. Adkins would finish 10th out of a 29 car field in a fantastic drive.

The team was in high spirits after the race and decided that they would try again Saturday in the Iron Man Late Model Series and attempt to make the $10,000 to win feature. It would be quite the feat for the 604 Crate already dubbed the "Little Crate Engine That Could" by the team's peers.

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