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Brian Brown – Sixth at World Finals!

Brian Brown and the Casey’s General Stores/FVP #21 team turned in a strong showing at the World of Outlaws World Finals at The Dirt Track in Charlotte, North Carolina last weekend. The Grain Valley, Missouri driver climbed from row five to finish sixth in Saturday’s finale.

Thursday at the World Finals always brings a lot of pressure, because you are qualifying for both Friday and Saturday programs.

We went out late in the first group for Friday and we laid down a good lap for where we went on the track. That made us eighth quick. Our goal going out there was to be a little further up the board, but we took what was available for where we went out.

How did the second round go?

We kind of guessed wrong in the second set (for Saturday). We thought the groove would be around the top, but it was back on the bottom like it had been in the first set. We made a couple of wrong guesses, and we ended up seventh quick. But for the first time that we’ve gone to Charlotte, we had two good qualifying efforts. In the past, we’ve had one good one and one really bad one.

On Friday, you started third in your heat race, but you were able to gain a spot and get into the Dash.

We were able to get by Stevie (Smith) there and get into the Dash. That was important. We started fifth in Dash, fell back to sixth, and then we were able to get back up to fourth. Going into the feature on Friday, we felt confident.

You started eighth in Friday’s prelim.

I didn’t do a good job early of picking my spots. I gave up some track position and kind of hung around there in the top ten. There was a double-file restart late, and my row (inside) got bottled up. That put me back in 15th or 16th. We were able to rally back and take tenth from Joey (Saldana), and he got us back on the last lap. If everything went right, and I would have made the right decisions, we could have had a sixth or seventh place car. It just didn’t work out and we ended up eleventh.

For Saturday’s heat, you lined up outside the second row.

The track was pretty narrow in the first heat. We got a good run on the start and tried to go four (tires) above the cushion. We were beside Tim Shaffer, but we couldn’t get him cleared. We ended up finishing third, and that wasn’t the end of the world. That lined us up ninth for the A.

You definitely moved forward again in the feature.

Chad (Morgan) and Michael (Williams) did a good job of getting us a great car for the A. We were able to get right into eighth. We were really good on the double-file restarts Saturday as well. We were able to get a position or two every restart. We were able to get into the top five, and we had a restart where we were beside Greg Hodnett there for a possible podium. We were fifth until the last lap, and Logan (Schuchart) was able to get a good run and get by us.

The last few weeks have really gone well running with the Outlaws.

With around 50 cars, to have a car capable of a top five was good. The last three or four weeks with the Outlaws, we’ve been right in the hunt with them. We haven’t been just making appearances with them. We’ve been passing cars and moving forward. Things have been working really well. I feel we’ve gained more in the last month than we have in two years. That gets us excited moving forward.

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