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Brian Brown – Looking for Another World Finals Win!

Brian Brown and the Casey’s General Stores/FVP #21 team are looking for another win at the World of Outlaws World Finals at The Dirt Track in Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend. The Grain Valley, Missouri driver was quick with the WoO last Friday night before contact with another car and the wall ended his night close to home at Lakeside Speedway near Kansas City.

You time in well, fifth quick at Lakeside on Friday.

That was a testament to our engine builder, Charlie Garrett. That engine was due to go back for freshening. To have that many laps on it and to still be able to go out and qualify in the top five, we were pretty proud of that. Our Maxim chassis and FK Shocks were on point too. Chad (Morgan) and Michael (Williams) did a phenomenal job of getting the car ready as well.

That put you up front in the heat and you won that, putting yourself in the Dash.

The first start, I didn’t get going as well as I would have liked. Jason (Johnson) was three-wide with us coming off of two. Then Jason crashed. I knew the next one…I had to get going or there could be trouble. When Shane (Stewart) and Jason are in the second row, you can’t jack around. We were able to get the lead there and pull away. There was a caution late, and our car took off well again. I think we ran a faster lap there than we had even in qualifying, so that shows you how good our car was.

The invert for the Dash was six.

Unfortunately, the worst pill for us was drawn. We started fifth and on the second lap, we had a run on (David) Gravel. I got into the water sitting on the bottom and spun. We had a double-file restart and we were able to get by Gravel and get a good run on Daryn (Pittman) on the backstretch. He did what he should have and took up as much room as possible into three. That got me into the water again, and I got really lucky to not get torn up. We spun it around and broke the sway bar. It could have been worse. In my eyes, we were as good as anybody. We just kind of had nowhere to go.

After starting sixth in the feature, you steadily moved forward.

Our double-file restarts have gone really well the last couple nights (Port Royal and Lakeside). That starts with your engines and you have to make the right guesses and stay out of the bad spots. We had one that was o.k., and two or three that were really good for us. We were able to get up to third at one time.

Unfortunately, contact from another car sent you into the wall at that point.

We were racing Joey (Saldana) for third there, and that killed our momentum a little bit. Logan (Schuchart) got a run on us. I was on the top of one and two and he was on the bottom. We ran out of real estate on the backstretch and met. I got the wrong end of the stick. It definitely wasn’t the way we wanted the night to end, especially in front of a home crowd. I really if we weren’t good enough to win, we definitely had a top three car. We bent the frame in the deal, and that kept us out of action on Saturday. The good news is, the guys at Maxim are phenomenal at fixing cars, and we’ll get it over to them.

I know you are looking forward to Charlotte this weekend.

The guys are busy prepping for the World Finals, and there’s no doubt in my mind that when we unload in Charlotte, we’ll be ready to go. It’s a unique format. All the qualifying is done on Thursday.

Charlotte is always a big event.

A three-day event like this is something I think the World of Outlaws should be looking at long term. It cuts down on the travel when you have 15-20 of these event formats. It’s fun to run with the Late Models and Modifieds in front of 20,000 people. It’s a prestigious show, and we were lucky enough to win it a couple years ago. We feel like the way we’re working as a team, if we can get qualified in, we have a shot both nights. It’s fun to go to the racetrack when you’re fast, and we are right now.

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