EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. – After a disappointing run at New Smyrna, Emily Packard and the Northstar Fireworks/Packard Fuels team spent the last 6 weeks focusing on bettering the car for the American Canadian Tour opener, and it looks to have paid off. In Packard’s first trip to Oxford Plains Speedway, a track that really suits her driving style, the sophomore driver in the ACT tour showed patience of a veteran, which paid off with a fourth place finish. “When we returned from New Smyrna, we found a few little things that were wrong with the car, but we made those changes and just seeing how it ran this weekend makes me feel a lot better about going forward through the season,” said Packard.
With limited practice on Friday, the team unloaded the car Sunday and readied it for first practice. Packard took to the track for a few laps, posting the fourth fastest time in that first practice then brought the car back to the attention of crew chief, Neal Woodward, to see if they could make any changes to get it a little tighter through turns 3 and 4, but all in all the car was really good. “After the first practice, we knew that we had a really good car at that point, and we just spent the remaining practices trying a couple things to see if we could make the car better or how the car changed after each adjustment,” Packard said.
Packard rolled out starting 6th in the second heat and immediately found that the outside lane was not going anywhere. She battled to try to stay in the top 6, but by the end of the 10 lap heat race had fallen to a seventh place finish. “Not being able to get down to the bottom right away hurt me, and I tried to make my way forward when I finally got cleared low, but I was out of time,” Packard said. Not discouraged by this, Packard knew that she had a great race car for the 150 lap feature. “I knew that we had a really strong race car,” said Packard. “We were able to keep the car under control through practice and the heat race and still be fast, so I knew that the car was going to be good come race time.”
When the feature race started, Packard took the green from the 20th starting position, and by lap 20 had worked up to seventeenth. She spent the remainder of the race methodically picking her way through the field, taking advice from spotter, Steve Tapley, to take “little bites” to get by each car. “I just did it little by little throughout the race, the outside groove had no grip, so most of my passing we had to find the hole on the bottom, take it when I could and just ride it out,” Packard said.
At the halfway point of the race, Packard had moved up into the top ten running in eighth place. By lap 100 Packard was in fifth, and spend lap after lap battling with a couple of lap cars, that she was finally able to clear and pull away in the fourth position. “The lapped cars definitely played a huge role in my race today,” Packard said. “It was a little frustrating to work around them, but they were doing what they were supposed to do and go to the bottom, but unfortunately the bottom lane is where everyone wanted to be so going up to the top to pass them was really hard.”
On the final restart she spent the last 12 laps closing in on the third place car, but ran out of laps before she could make a move, finishing her debut trip to Oxford Plains Speedway in fourth place. “I am certainly happy with our finish today, and I know that we had a car that could have contended for the lead,” said Packard. “Overall it was a really good run and I am very happy with it. A huge thank you to my team, my mom and dad, and especially my sponsors: Northstar Fireworks, Packard Fuels, Rutland Regional Medical Center, Be The Match, Yipes! of Barre, Fecteau Homes, Berlin Optical Expressions, Creative Visions and GossCars.com.”
Next up for the Emily and the team is Lee USA Speedway, NH Governor’s Cup 150, April 26th, racing starts at 1 pm.
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