DISAPPOINTING RACE FOR RAPHAËL LESSARD AT THE MYRTLE BEACH SPEEDWAY
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, March 24, 2018 - St-Joseph-de-Beauce native Raphaël Lessard was back in the CARS Tour series at the Myrtle Beach Speedway this Saturday afternoon. It is in 6th place that the 2016 CARS Tour Champion finished the BakerDist.com 200 presented by Honeywell, a 100-lap race.
Raphaël, a member of the Toyota Racing Development program (TRD), stood out of the field by setting the fastest lap in practice this Friday. It is behind the wheel of his Toyota Camry #51 FRL Express/Mobil 1/Toyota prepared by Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) that the 16-year-old driver set the pace in front of Jeff Fultz during the qualification session Saturday morning.
It is from the front row that Raphaël started the race in front of 16 Super Late Model (SLM) cars. Although Raphaël led the first lap, the team's strategy was to preserve the tires as much as they could. Indeed, Myrtle Beach Speedway is a very abrasive track where tire preservation is essential.
Raphaël, along with team KBM, decided to preserve his tires, thus backing up in the ranking. It is a very conservative field that raced the first portion of the 100-lap event. He even dropped to the end of the pack, before making his way up to the front of the field at the halfway mark. It is after 70 laps that a competition yellow was brought out while Lessard was 11th.
The KBM team took advantage of a competition yellow to pit the #51 car and to change the two right tires and make some adjustments. Raphaël took the pit stop as an opportunity to give a quick interview to the CARS Tour TV crew in which he stated that; "it is now time to go. We have new tires, so I will do my best to get up front."
It is with new tires and confidence that Raphaël came back on track. He started making his way up, doing what he does best as he was passing his competitors up until 6th place. A caution flag was brought out with only 5 laps to go. Even though the field was very close during the restart, Raphaël was not able to gain momentum and win for a second time, finishing in an unrepresentative 6th place.
"I am very disappointed with the result, more so that we had a very fast car at the beginning of the race," Raphaël said. "Unfortunately, the car was not to my liking after the pit stop. I still want to thank Kyle Busch Motorsports who did an outstanding job on my car, and Toyota, my investors and my parents who are always there. I would also like to thank all the fans that came to la Cage-Brasserie Sportive to support me. It's only a matter of time before our first victory of the season!"
Next race: Raphaël's next race will be on April 7th in the ARCA-CRA/CARS series at the Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville, Tennessee.
