Steve Lines Leaves Ohio Sprint Speedweek Series With Pleasing Results

Making three feature races out of the six nights during the recently concluded 27th annual Ohio Sprint Speedweek Series were very commendable achievements for Australian Steve Lines.

When you consider how extremely tough the Ohio Sprint Speedweek Series is and also the fact that he was visiting a new track on each of the six nights; Lines’ results were quite impressive.

“It was tough, very tough!” Lines expressed. “When you are racing on foreign tracks, many of which are very daunting places, the main goal is to just get up to speed as quickly as possible without coming to grief. Over the six nights I would be get up to speed pretty quickly, but some tracks it would take a little longer and by the time I would be up to fairly good speed it was a little too late.”

The Ohio Sprint Speedweek Series is certainly not for the faint hearted and Lines found out.

“I knew it [Ohio Sprint Speedweek Series] was going to be a very big challenge and it didn’t let me down in that regard,” he confessed. “With 50 plus cars each and every night qualifying time trials are very important and if you mess it [time trials] up or get a bad marble draw then you are going to be on the back foot. Back in Australia you can most of the time you can get away with a poor time trial; you just make it up in your heat race and still get into the feature race, but with the competition being so much tougher you simply cannot do that over here.”

Over the Ohio Sprint Speedweek Series Lines made three out of the six feature races, two of which he managed to transfer directly into the feature race, and he was unlucky to miss out on making the feature race on the other three nights too. The opening night at Eldora Speedway Lines came out and qualified a magnificent 20th out of 48 cars and missed out on a direct transfer into the feature race from his heat race by one spot. The following night at Millstream Speedway Lines was only a single lap away from transferring into the feature race in the B-main only to be bulked by a lapped car and be passed by fellow Australian Brooke Tatnell for the final transfer spot into the feature race line up. During the sixth and final night at Fremont Speedway Lines had a poor time trial, due to an early marble draw, and during his heat race fell one spot shy of making the top five and locking in a feature race transfer spot.

“I can look back over my performances over the six nights and be pretty pleased with how we went, but being the racer that I am, I always strive to do better,” Lines confessed. “Going to a track like Eldora Speedway [which is regarded as one of the most daunting tracks in the world] with only a couple of hot laps and then qualifying 20th in time trials was a very proud achievement, however the racing itself there is just insane. It’s the type of track that takes you years to get a handle of, as you just cannot turn up and be straight on the pace there. In my heat race at Eldora Speedway I started from the front row and within a handful of laps I was pushed back to sixth as the drivers around me were just so much faster and more experienced around there.”

At the completion of the Ohio Sprint Speedweek Series Lines ended up 14th overall in the standings with a total of 465 points.

2009 Ohio Sprint Speedweek Series in Review:

Night One:
Eldora Speedway (Rossburg, OH)
20th in Time Trials (48 cars)
6th in Heat Race
13th in B-main

Night Two:
Millstream Speedway (Findlay, OH)
25th in Time Trials (60 cars)
7th in Heat Race
5th in B-main

Night Three:
Hilltop Speedway (Millersburg, OH)
9th in Time Trials (42 cars)
6th in Heat Race
4th in B-main
16th in Feature Race

Night Four:
Waynesfield Raceway Park (Waynesfield, OH)
24th in Time Trials (50 cars)
5th in Heat Race
16th in Feature Race

Night Five:
Limaland Motorsports Park (Lima, OH)
16th in Time Trials (49 cars)
5th in Heat Race
18th in Feature Race

Night Six:
Fremont Speedway (Fremont, OH)
36th in Time Trials (43 cars)
6th in Heat Race
13th in B-main

Steve Lines is proudly supported by the following organisations:

Holla-Fresh
Camden Neon Signs
Ad Trans
Maxwill Racing Engines
Torque Power
BR Motorsports
J&J Auto Racing
Cascade Cleaning Solutions
KTM Australia
Spy Eyewear
Thor Clothing

To find out more about Steve Lines visit his official website: www.stevelines.com
 

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