Patrick Sheltra Heads To ARCA RE/MAX Series At Chicagoland Speedway
Show your support.
Buzz this article up.
Sep 04, 2008
Sheltra Motorsports
JOLIET, Illinois—Feeling refreshed after his awesome second place finish earlier this week at the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds, Patrick Sheltra heads to Chicagoland Speedway this weekend looking to put an exclamation point to Monday’s run.
The Indiantown, Florida native will make his third start at the 1.5-mile speedway and looking for his first top-10 finish there. In his most recent start at Chicagoland Speedway, Sheltra qualified a solid 16th and hovered in the top-15 for much of the event’s 134 circuits before crossing the start-finish line 13th on his way to an impressive seventh place finish in the championship standings.
Now, with an improved resume and better equipment on his side, Sheltra is ready to break out in a big way Saturday afternoon.
“Chicagoland, here I come,” said Sheltra. “I like the place. It’s real smooth and real fast. We should be good there this weekend.”
He continued, “I’m so proud of my guys for the great job they’ve done all year with the cars. As a team, we improved so much that we can literally taste victory. We’re gonna get there and our chances for this weekend look real good.”
For the 10th and final time this season, Sheltra and his team will bring a Dodge Charger to the track. With one top-five and five top-10s already in the books under the Dodge banner, the team is hoping to record their first win under the Chrysler nameplate. The team answered their inaugural debut with Dodge with a respectable eighth place finish at Kansas Speedway. A week later the team proved that the finish was no fluke as Sheltra steered through late race carnage and confusion at Kentucky Speedway to record an seventh place finish. In June, Sheltra mounted his best finish in a Charger after recording a sixth place finish at the two-mile oval of Michigan International Speedway. Sheltra also battled back from adversity to nail a 10th place finish in the TOYOTA ARCA 150 at Nashville Superspeedway in early August. Most recently, Sheltra in the Southern Illinois 100 qualified a respectable ninth before charging to a second place finish, their best finish in a Charger. The new manufacturer also catapulted Sheltra to record a career best qualifying effort (Kansas) while also leading the field for four laps at the 1.5-mile race track of Kansas Speedway.
“We’ve enjoyed monstrous success with the Dodge program this year and it’s a shame that this is our last weekend with the camouflage paint scheme, but I think we can go out with a bang. We’re bringing a fast hot rod and some serious horsepower, so hopefully the luck will continue for us and we can be a contender Saturday afternoon.”
When asked to compare Chicagoland Speedway verses the other 1.5-mile tracks on the ARCA circuit of Kentucky Speedway and Kansas Speedway, Sheltra paused but then replied. “Well, physically they all look the same,” Sheltra laughed. “They are all very good race tracks. We’ve ran good at both Kansas and Kentucky this year and there is no doubt we won’t do the same again this weekend at Chicagoland. The tracks though are never the same. Each track has their own unique characteristics. The flip side is that you can start with similar setups and just tweak from there. My crew chief John Hayden and our newest member Larry Moore (Director of Competition) have put their heads together and I think we’ll have a rocket ship this weekend.”
Crew Chief John Hayden has elected to bring Sheltra Motorsports chassis number 15 to Chicagoland Speedway this weekend. The team ran that model at the open ARCA RE/MAX Series test and race at Nashville Superspeedway in addition to the test and race at Michigan International Speedway in June. Chassis number 11 will serve as the team’s backup automobile. This is the same automobile the team participated with in both Pocono Raceway events this year.
“I like this car,” explained Sheltra. “It ran real good at Nashville Superspeedway last month and it was fast at Michigan. We’ve got a superb RC Consultants motor coming, so I’m looking forward to making some noise in our final intermediate race of the year.”
Entering “The Windy City”, Sheltra has 41 ARCA RE/MAX Series starts to his credit with a career best finish of second at Toledo Speedway (May 2008) and the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds (September 2008) with two additional top-five finishes (third) at Illinois State Fairgrounds (August 2007), (fourth) at Berlin Raceway (July 2007) while holding additional top-10s at Nashville Superspeedway (August 2008), Michigan International Speedway (June 2008), Kentucky Speedway (May 2008), Kansas Speedway (April 2008), Iowa Speedway (April 2008), Kentucky Speedway (June 2007), DuQuoin State Fairgrounds (September 2007) and Toledo Speedway (October 2007). An eighth place qualifying effort at Kansas Speedway (April 2008) is Sheltra’s best time trials efforts to date. He has controlled the ARCA field twice for 15 laps.
