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Rip Michels and his Stock Building Supply/ Ladco Racing/ Victory
Circle Chevrolet Monte Carlo racing team headed to Utah this past
weekend to compete in the Rocky Mountain Challenge Series “Napa
Auto Parts 125,” at the famed Rocky Mountain Speedway in Salt Lake
City, Utah.
This was a special appearance for the team as a way of thanking
all the stores and associates from the Utah area for their support
of the race team. On Friday, Rip and his wife Laurie were at the
Stock Building Supply Store in Orem, Utah. While Team Manager,
Michael Medlin and the rest of the team went to the Stock Building
Supply Store in West Jordan, Utah for a Barbeque and meet and
greet.
With over 500 Employees, Associates, Contractors, and Customers at
each store. Both Rip and the team were simply blown away by the
amount of people who showed up at each of the store’s locations.
They did their best to answer all of the questions that were
fielded to them, and they came away with new fans and most
importantly, new friends.
With the team well fed, they had to get back to work and the task
at hand, which was to win the race. Rip’s last visit to Utah for
Stock ended up in a first lap crash, which damaged the car so
badly that they had to ride around at the back of the pack. The
team really wanted to redeem themselves.
The car was really fast right off the truck with Rip posting the
fastest times in two of the three practices. When it was time to
qualify, the team felt confident that they would be able to set
fast time for the event. Unfortunately, the new tires were quite
different from the tires the team practiced on and Rip nearly
collected the fence on both of his qualifying laps. Rip qualified
16th.
The team immediately went to work on the car, they changed a few
things in the front end and hoped for the best during the race.
With over 2,000 people in attendance from Stock Building Supply,
the team was quite nervous about the outcome of the race. Rip
started the race in the 5th position due to the 20-car invert. At
the drop of the green flag, Rip from his fifth starting position
immediately got to second on lap one, and by lap two was in the
lead. Rip never looked back and captured his first career victory
at Rocky Mountain Raceway.
“This was a huge win for us as a team,” said Rip. “We had so many
people in attendance from Stock, I wanted to make sure we did not
have a repeat of last year. I want to thank Duff Wakefield and all
of his associates from the stores in Utah. They are a huge part of
this race team and I am so glad to be associated with them.”
Rip and the team’s next race will be race number 12 for the Nascar
AutoZone Elite Southwest Series race at Shasta Raceway Park, in
Anderson, Ca. on September 10, 2005.
For more information about Rip Michels and his sponsors, please
visit www.ripmichels.com
Source By: LRM Sports Marketing, Inc. |
