Jim Yates went into Sunday’s opening round of the CSK Nationals at Firebird Raceway believing he had a good chance of upsetting Warren Johnson. He did better than that – he not only advanced to the semifinals, he came within six-thousandths of a second of becoming a finalist.
“It felt good to get a couple of good round wins and get into the top 10 in POWERade points, †Yates said after his narrow loss to Jason Line. The veteran driver from Occoquan, Va., was on his driving game. He left the starting line first against Line and first-round foe Warren Johnson.
“We gave Jason a good run. We still haven’t been able to refine our combination because we don’t have many runs on our Wiley X/Sea Ray Boats Pontiac GTO, †added Yates. “I felt we made three good runs on Sunday.
Yates had a. 041-second reaction against Johnson, who had a. 132 leave time, and Yates stopped the clock at 6.692 seconds at 206.45 mph to Johnson’s quicker and faster 6.659 at 207.30.
Yates had with a solo run in the next round when Greg Anderson broke at the line, and he drove through in 6.705 at 206.23.
The unpredictable Firebird track didn’t trouble Yates in the semifinals, either. His. 041 reaction to Line’s. 059 kept him in the lead until near the finish line. Yates was timed in 6.723 at 206.79 to Line’s 6.699 at 207.05.
“We are happy with our results. We had three good elimination runs, †said Yates, who is seventh in points with 104. “We learned a ton of things and we are looking forward to the next 21 races. â€
The first of those comes with the ACDelco Nationals at Gainesville, Fla., March 16-18.
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