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Almost a Home Track: McCarl Looks for Another Win at Eagle Raceway LINCOLN, ILL (June 13) - While Knoxville Raceway and Huset’s Speedway are Terry McCarl’s two home tracks, Eagle Raceway in Nebraska is not very far behind. It’s a scant 191-mile trip south to the track from his shop in Altoona, Iowa and over the years he has had a great deal of success at the high-banked 1/3-mile in the Cornhusker state. McCarl will make his second start of the season at Eagle Raceway on Saturday, June 14 in the annual Eagle Nationals, which is always one of the most anticipated events of the season for the Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series. “When I first started going there, I didn’t do very well for a lot of years,” said the six-time Knoxville Raceway and Huset’s Speedway champion. “For some reason it started to click about four or five years ago. I’ve always run pretty well there, and we have a lot of fans over there. It’s a great race track and they have great fans there. It is a perfect size race track. When Craig Cormack bought it, he really made a lot of improvements and made it a nice facility.” McCarl won earlier this season at Eagle Raceway in the Icebreaker Challenge, in a 360-sprint car. He has six career wins at the high-banked 1/3-mile, along with 15 Top-10 finishes. He has six Top-10 finishes in Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series action at the track. Despite having turned laps at the track this season and winning there, he doesn’t see that as being much of an advantage on Saturday night. “It really won’t matter racing against the Outlaws,” noted the driver of the Big Game Treestands Eagle. “Steve Kinser has won there more times than I have raced there. It’s not a big advantage when it comes to an Outlaws show, maybe in a local show it would be. The Outlaws guys are so tough on any surface any night and are so good at adapting. There are very few tracks where someone has an advantage against these guys.” During the first East Coast swing of the season at the end of May, McCarl welcomed Dave Lawrence to the team as crew chief. Lawrence was part of Donny Schatz’s championship winning team in 2007. That move immediately paid dividends as the pair picked up a seventh-place finish at Rolling Wheels Raceway Park in New York, in one of their first races together. McCarl has continued running very strong since the Pennsylvania native joined his camp to turn the wrenches. “It’s been huge,” McCarl shared of Lawrence joining the team. “He has my motors running well. My motors have not been running that well for the last couple of years. Along with that, he is confident in himself and that has created a confidence in the team which gives me confidence when I go out on the race track. The biggest thing he has done for me is that he has me believing everything is going to be really good. Confidence as a driver is really important and that is something he has helped me with.” McCarl also has a couple of new crew members on his team this year, and the entire crew is getting more used to working together the more the World of Outlaws race. The last two weeks have given the team plenty of chances to feel each other out. With the schedule continuing to pick up in the next few weeks, they will have plenty of time to iron out any wrinkles as they close in on their first World of Outlaws A-Feature win of the season. “That’s been a hard thing to do because we haven’t race a lot yet, and everyone meshing is very important,” explained the always focused driver of getting used to his new crew. “We are getting to the heat of the summer and there will be all the races you want coming up. I’m just really happy to Dave at the helm of this deal. He and I have meshed and that is the most important thing.” McCarl is currently 10th in the World of Outlaws championship standings on the strength of seven Top-10 finishes, with four of those being Top-Five performances. He was running fourth last Friday night at Knoxville Raceway when a broken driveline ended his night. He rebounded on Saturday night to finish third, after winning the Crane Cams Dash to earn the pole for the A-Feature. Minus some bad luck this season, McCarl has been pretty fast on most nights and has been consistently running up front, with a season-best finish of second at Lernerville Speedway in Pennsylvania on May 13. “Last weekend I think we were definitely the car to beat on Friday (at Knoxville) and we had a shot at a Top-Five on Sunday (Tri-City Speedway) and had some mechanical problems that weren’t anyone’s fault,” he said. “That’s the way that racing is and sometimes it works out that way. We were running very strong in all of those races.” McCarl notes a number of things that are important to be running up front on Saturday night in the Eagle Nationals. He is confident that his team will be fast out of the box and as long as they can keep away some of the bad luck that has been following them this year, they will be a threat to win. The promoter inside of him also is excited for the caliber of show that the fans see at Eagle Raceway. “It can get real slick over there,” McCarl pointed out. “The fans have seen a lot of great races there. If it gets a good surface, it’s one of the best places to watch as a fan. We have a lot of run racing there. It’s like anywhere else, track position is important and you need a little luck on your side as well. As long as we don’t have any mechanical problems, we should be a contender.” On Saturday, June 14 at Eagle Raceway, adult tickets will be $30 in advance and $35 the day of the race, while tickets for children ages 6-13 will be $10, with kids 5-under being admitted free of charge with a paying adult (1 child per adult ticket). For ticket information visit: http://www.eagleraceway.com or call the track at 402-238-2595. |