Steve Willard Shows No Signs Of Rust After Winning Daytona
The fifth season of LROC kicked off in Daytona with some changes and some familiarties. There is a new but old change as The Cool Pool returns to the fold to replace FASCAR. This year there are more drivers to choose from which means higher scores each week.
After the first race of the season, there isn't any change on top of the standings as Steve Willard who won the 2009 LROC drivers championship, wins at Daytona to start the new season on top again. Last year Steve had two wins, back to back victories in races #14 & 15. This is Steve's third career win which puts him into a tie with four other drivers for third most LROC wins.
Steve scored a total of 1,658 points which obviously is a new points record since we are now using more drivers per race. He took the win by 1 17 point margin of victory over 2nd place.
Steve's team, P10 Select also starts the season on top as they score a total of 8,844 points. They beat Lucky Dog Racing who finishes 2nd this week with 8,463 points. In The Cool Pool's return, they finish 3rd with 8,152 points.
P10 Select had the top 2 finishing drivers; Fred Moore finished in 2nd place in his debut in the LROC series. Fred scored a total of 1,641 points. The team placed two more drivers in the top 10, Richard Schneider in 8th and Ryan Zaroda 10th.
In his debut in LROC, Matt Sealey finished in 3rd place with 1570 points, the highest finishing Lucky Dog Racing driver. Lucky Dog Racing also placed Lou Demian in 6th and Ed Blackman in 7th place.
The Cool Pool also placed two of its drivers in the top 5 with Kevin Sullivan in 4th and Scott Polonhki 5th. The last time that Kevin raced for The Cool Pool he won the LROC Championship. Of course back then it was only four races at the time, but looks like he is off to a good start again. Stephen Miller was the third member of The Cool Pool to make the top 10, so all three teams had at least three members in the top 10.
The next time that the LROC series will race will be the weekend of March 27th. That will be a split weekend of the Cup and Truck races at Martinsville and the Nationwide race the following week at Nashville.
Tony Stewart had a great win in the Nationwide race but fizzled big time in the Daytona 500.
