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Brian Brown- Queen's Royale This Weekend!

Brian Brown and the Casey’s General Stores/FVP #21 are ready for the Queen’s Royale this weekend at the St. Francois County Raceway near Farmington, Missouri. The Grain Valley, Missouri driver racked up a ninth place finish in last Saturday’s Jesse Hockett/Daniel McMillin finale. He locked himself into the feature event after seventh and eleventh place finishes on Thursday and Friday.

I know the Hockett/McMillin Memorial is one of your priorities every year.

It’s such a great event. It’s always been a great race, but now it’s gone to three days. Dan Robinson and the Hockett family did a phenomenal job of making it a cool event again. It keeps getting bigger, and this year we had 65 wing cars and 45 non-wing cars.

You started fourth in Thursday’s heat.

We started off well. We were able to get up to second in the heat and we were able to win our Qualifier. That set us up well for the A main.

You started fourth in the feature. How was the car?

We felt we were pretty good in the feature. It just didn’t play out to what we needed to move up. We’d pass a car and the yellow would come out. Or we would be racing a car and the yellow would come out. It just didn’t play out the way we’d hoped and it ended up with a seventh place finish.

There didn’t seem to be much passing in the heats and Qualifiers on Friday.

We drew the middle of the heat. It was the first heat and we went through eighteen or twenty tear-offs. It was slimy and one-lane and we finished fourth. That put us behind the eight-ball. We went from ninth to eighth in the Qualifer, but we were able to come back and win the B main.

Starting 19th in the feature, you put on a show.

We were able to get up to eleventh. We felt we had a really good car, but track position didn’t play out for us. We didn’t get cautions when we needed them. We ended up eleventh, and that gave us enough points to lock into Saturday’s feature.

You earned a spot in row four for Saturday’s finale.

We hot-lapped pretty well. I think we were third or fourth on the board. They reworked the track, and we guessed that the track would stay around longer than it did. It blew off pretty quick and we missed it setup wise. If you do that with the quality of cars that were there, you’re going to run ninth and that’s what we did.

How did you look back on the night?

We weren’t thrilled about it, but it was on us. We made some bad decisions. I was on the wrong part of the track a couple of times too. That doesn’t hinder the fact that the guys worked hard on the car all weekend. It was great to have people from Impact, Ditzfeld Transfer and Champion Oil there. All those great people were there to support us. It just didn’t play out the way we wanted.

You have the Queen’s Royale this Friday and Saturday.

We’re looking forward to Farmington. It’s always good to go down there. Facing the locals down there is a lot like going into Pennsylvania. They have a very strong contingent of cars. I’m sure they’re going to give the invaders all they can handle. We’re looking for two solid nights, and we want to end the NSL year on a strong note.

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