Bryan Silas’s 15th place finish in Saturday’s Pocono ARCA 200 was probably one of the most challenging efforts of his young ARCA career as the Stuart, Florida native overcame several obstacles to bounce back from a disappointing finish at Toledo Speedway last month.
Riding high on Pocono Raceway, Silas was looking forward to making his third career ARCA start at the 2.5-mile triangle a pleasant one.
In the first and lone practice session of the weekend, Silas recorded the 20th fastest lap. Knowing they had some work to do, Silas immediately consulted with crew chief Jeff McClure seeing what changes they could make to better improve the handling of their No. 11 Palm Beach Grading Ford Fusion.
“We can’t be happy with our 20th place effort,” Silas said. “Pocono Raceway is one of my favorite race tracks and I really want to have a good weekend. We just need to make some adjustments to make our car handle the way we need it to.”
Hoping the changes they made would pay off, Silas entered ARCA SIM Factory pole qualifying optimistically. Racking in a time of 56.102 seconds at 160.422 MPH, Silas locked 19th on the starting grid. “We’re not perfect, but we’re better than we were in practice. We’ll work on our car during the race and hope we can move towards the front,” the Stuart, Florida native explained following time trials.
At the start of the Pocono ARCA 200, Silas maintained a healthy spot in the top-20. Just biding his time, Silas continued to sport solid lap times but radioed to his Fast Track Racing team that his car still wasn’t driving to his liking.
McClure, the veteran ARCA RE/MAX Series crew chief acknowledged his driver’s request and stated they would make a change on the team’s first pit stop.
Approaching lap 11, Silas made a trip down pit road for fuel and a chassis adjustment. Restarting in the top-30, Silas used his head and picked off positions one at a time until the next caution flag waived on lap 24. The Fast Track Racing team would take advantage of the yellow flag to stay out on the race course to lead lap 30. Returning to pit road for fuel, Silas would regroup in the top-20.
Hovering in the top-20 closing in on halfway, Silas would again shine in the spotlight by taking the spot again on lap 51 and leading for two circuits before being overtaken by Scott Speed.
Staying in the top-10, Silas looked well on his way to his fourth top-10 finish of the season but a faulty start on a late race restart caused Silas’s tires to spin. Not having a firm reality of what just happened, Silas picked up the throttle and began his charge from 22nd to finish 15th over the final 10 circuits.
The finish was a Pocono-best for Silas. Following the event, the Fast Track Racing team diagnosed a problem with a locker in the rear of the No. 11 Ford Fusion which broke causing Silas’s machine to be a handful and the cause of the problem on the restart.”
Overall, it was not a bad day,” said Silas. “We led some laps but we had a problem with the locker that we found at the end of the race which explains a lot of the problems we had this weekend. We’ll take this finish in stride and hope we can go to Michigan and grab our fourth top-10 of 2008.”
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