Fultz & JCR3Racing Picking Up Right Where They Left Off

Jeff Fultz and his JCR3 Racing team have been racing with the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series for a good portion of the year thus far. However, he and the team will officially start a new era for themselves on Saturday night, April 29, when they take part in the Greased Lightning 250 at Concord Motorsport Park.

That’s because just a couple of hours down the road, the NASCAR Southeast Series will be opening its 2006 season at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in South Carolina. This will be the first time since 1996 that Fultz and the team’s #54 C & C Boiler Sales & Service / JCR3 Racing Pontiac will not be at the Southeast Series opener. Instead, their focus will be on their new venture, the Pro Cup Series, where Fultz has already earned his first top-10 finish, a sixth at Peach State Speedway just a couple of weeks ago, in just his third-career start.

“I am focused on the Pro Cup deal, but at the same time, we’ll still be thinking about what’s going on down there in Greenville,” said Fultz. “I’ve got a lot of friends down there and we’ll be calling and checking on what is going on. No matter what, a lot of the All Pro (Southeast Series) guys are really good friends and they are like family to us.

“But we’ve found a really good home here with the Pro Cup Series and they treat us good. The exposure you can get from this series is big for us too. And it is a lot of fun. It is something new for all of us and we are really enjoying it.”

Fultz earned his third Southeast Series championship last season. Not only was it his third championship, but it was his second-

straight in the Southeast Series and his third in the last four years (2002, 2004, & 2005). With his four SES wins in 2005, Fultz became the all-time wins leader for the series with 26. In addition to all of his wins, Fultz has 59 career top-5 and 90 top-10 finishes (in 138 starts).

Now, Fultz is hoping that his SES success carries over to the Pro Cup Series. And he looks to be right on track. His debut with the series came in the second Southern Division race of the year at South Georgia Motorsports Park.

“It’s been tough to take to the Pro Cup Series because we have been a little behind,” added Fultz. “We didn’t decide we were going to do this (Pro Cup Series) deal until late. Our team has been together for a while, so that makes the transition a lot easier. We know what we’ve got to do to be in a points race since we’ve been together for so long. We’ve always ran well for points. If we don’t’ have a car that can win, we’ll get everything we can out of the car without tearing it up. So far, what we’ve had to do to get some decent finishes and not tear the car up so we can go back and work on getting things better.

“We are learning. We are learning at each race. We are qualifying better and finishing better at each race. They are so different than a Busch car or a Cup car or an All Pro car or a Super Late Model. It is nice to just keep learning. But running 250 laps, you just learn a lot too. The pit stop makes a big difference. You learn to put yourself in the mindset where you can say ‘ok, the car isn’t that good right now, but we can get to the pit stop, make it better and we’ll be fine.’ We’ve done long races like that before, it just hasn’t been in the last couple of years.”

The Greased Lightning 250 is set to go off Saturday night, April 29th. The race will be televised on SPEED Channel at 5pm on Wednesday, May 3rd.