Jeff Fultz and his JCR3Racing team did everything right on Saturday night in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Southern Division race at Myrtle Beach Speedway (SC). Even though they didn’t qualify well, Fultz had one of the best cars on the historic track all night long. Pit stops were flawless, the breaks fell the right way and the on-track strategies worked to perfection so that Fultz could lead a large portion of Saturday’s race. When all was said and done, Fultz finished a season-best second, but that finish was negated by a post-race disqualification after USAR officials found a problem with the intake system on Fultz’s #54 machine.
“We bought that motor, put it in and the when the officials said there was a problem, our motor builder said that it didn’t check out that way for him,” said Fultz. “One of the runners may have been a little big but it wasn’t enough to get disqualified for. After all, you wouldn’t take a big motor there anyway. You want to take a little motor there. It doesn’t increase the horsepower.
”By no means were we trying to get away with anything. We bought this motor with the car and the motor builder knows what he’s doing. The Hooters officials are really nice in that if something’s wrong, it’s wrong. No one on our whole team knew
of the problem, but it wasn’t a performance enhancing issue. No matter what, we hate that this happened we’ll move on from this and go to Hickory and we’ll keep doing exactly what we’re doing. We’re still learning a lot about this series and we’ve never had something like this happen before.”
The end result and the final rundown of Saturday’s race won’t tell the full story of what Fultz’s Myrtle Beach race was really all about. Fultz had the kind of car that his JCR3Racing team had been working towards all season long. Even when the car started to get some internal issues late in the race, it was still a car capable of winning the race.
“The first set of tires and the second set of tires were right on. You just have to drive this track like I‘ve always driven it. We just drove up through there. I’d let them come to me and then I’d get by them. I thought that if we can get tires the same time or just a little later than everyone else, we’d be good to go.
“That last stop, we came in with Clay (Rogers, the race winner). He was the one I was really worried about. I still thought we’d be ok. When we took off though, I thought we had a right front flat. This last set of tires was a little bit different. Then, my left front brake started locking up and that might have hurt us too.”
Even with the good and the bad that came out of Myrtle Beach, Fultz is still happy that he and his JCR3Racing team are turning their season around.
“I’m really excited about how we are running. Now we go to Hickory. It’s not one of my favorite places, but this team has a lot of momentum and that’s all I can ask for. I didn’t know what we’d have with this car and all the work they put into it. But I’m happy with it, especially leading all of those laps. But in a way, you want to win when you lead all of those laps.
Next up for Fultz is the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Southern Division race at Hickory Motor Speedway on July 8th.
