Pitkat Brings Home the Show Money at North-South Shootout
2005 NSS SK Champion Finishes Third This Time Around
CONCORD, NC (November 6, 2006) – This weekend, Woody Pitkat headed to Concord Motorsport Park (NC) with some pretty fond memories. In 2005, he was the winner in the SK Modified portion of the North-South Shootout. He wasn’t able to exactly duplicate those memories this year, but walking away with the show money wasn’t too disappointing either.
“It was a good run,” smiled Pitkat, after finishing third behind Tom Rogers, Jr. and Bobby Santos, III. “I didn’t know what to expect. Last year we started fifth and we got the lead pretty early, and this year I just didn’t know. I had to start in the back, and it was definitely a lot harder coming from back there.”
Woody started from the back of the pack and began to work his way up through the field. With an impressive field of 34 SK Modifieds, it was a tedious task to get towards the front. But the former Shootout winner had a plan on how to do it.
“I followed Bobby Santos through the field for awhile. He has been here for a few times so I knew that he would be good to follow and then there were a couple of times you had to get underneath some guys. You just had to put it underneath them whether you knew or not if you would get through. But that is just part of racing.”
With Pitkat having to start in the back of the field, green flag runs would be important. Unfortunately for the young hotshoe, the event was caution-ridden and lapped cars played a major role in the outcome of the race. Pitkat needed a caution to gain ground late in the feature, but he just didn’t get it.
“It was good all in all. I think that if the caution had come out there at the end, with about eight to go, we might have had something for the leader, but that is just what happens. The tires got cold and never really came back in.”
Besides having to worry about getting up front Pitkat also had to worry about getting caught up in other people’s incidents as cautions flew many times through out the night. The race was red-flagged twice to clean up the massive accidents that occurred during the 50 scheduled laps.
“A couple of guys got squirrelly throughout the night, and I had to pull some moves to get by them. I thought some guys were just going to over correct and shoot it in the fence but we were able to get by all of them.
“I am definitely happy with third considering where we started, you have to have a lot of luck on your side and that is what we had a Thompson as well. Maybe it is the car that has the luck.”