{"id":15919,"date":"2016-04-26T18:45:08","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T22:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maineracing.com\/16\/?p=15919"},"modified":"2016-04-26T18:45:08","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T22:45:08","slug":"great-sixth-place-run-for-emily-packard-in-the-governors-cup-150","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/2016\/04\/great-sixth-place-run-for-emily-packard-in-the-governors-cup-150\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Sixth Place Run for Emily Packard in the Governor’s Cup 150"},"content":{"rendered":"
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photo by RPM 360<\/p><\/div>\n

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. \u2013 Seems a mid-week decision to run the 9x Northstar Fireworks\/Packard Fuels car at Lee USA Speedway this past Sunday<\/span> was the right call for Emily Packard and her team as she posted a sixth place finish in the Governor’s Cup 150.\u00a0 “I think us working together (with the Polewarczyk’s) again this weekend was a great way to keep the momentum going for the season,” said Packard.\u00a0 “The more fun we have together and the more we work together and get use to each other the better we are going to be and that showed in this weekend’s results with our sixth place finish.”<\/p>\n

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On Saturday<\/span>, taking advantage of an entire day to practice, the team spent much of the day working the set-up of the car, while Emily logged laps, providing feedback to the crew on the adjustments that would help to make the car better.\u00a0 “Saturday<\/span> we started the off the day not quite where we wanted to be on the time sheet.\u00a0 We were running too soft in the springs and we were bottoming out bad, combined with running on old tires,” said the 19-year old.\u00a0 “The guys kept making small adjustments to the car throughout practice, making sure not to go too far.\u00a0 Finally, they gave me some new tires and got me up off the track and we were second fast on the sheet in the fourth practice of the day.”\u00a0 In the last practice, Emily found herself to be eighth on the time sheet as she ran lap after lap to see how the car would change under a long green flag run.\u00a0 “I decided that there was a half hour of practice left, let’s put some older tires back on and go run a 50 lap run,” said Packard. “So we did, and we were able to get a feel for how the tires would hold up, and we found that there wasn’t too much fall of as far as our lap times went.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On race day, Packard headed out to the final practice with high confidence that the car was going to be good.\u00a0 She would post the eleventh fastest time, and both she and the team were happy and ready to race.\u00a0 Starting in the fourth position in the third heat, Packard would line up on the outside, knowing the preferred line would be the inside.\u00a0 Emily and Kevin (her spotter) had a quick discussion on the radio, with him telling her he would clear her down as soon as a spot would open.\u00a0 On lap one of the heat race, the yellow would wave for a spinning car out of turn 2 and with no official lap in the books, they would revert back to the original starting line-up for the restart.\u00a0 Packard would restart in fourth, but at the halfway point of the 12 lap heat race, she would be in the third spot, several car lengths over the fourth place finisher.\u00a0 As she crossed the line on the final lap she would finish in the third position, transferring her into the feature race, where she would start eleventh.\u00a0 “We started fourth and were able to get to the bottom and hold it there in third place,” said the East Montpelier driver. “I ran hard for a couple of laps, and the car didn\u2019t feel quite as good as it did in practice.\u00a0 I knew I wouldn’t catch the second place car, and I had a little room behind me over fourth, so I just relaxed a little and finished in third with a plus one.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The 150 lap Governor’s Cup feature was next, and Packard started on the inside lane in eleventh position.\u00a0 “Our stagger went really crazy during the heat race,” said Packard, “and we made some adjustments to the air pressure to bring it back to where we were.\u00a0 When we started the feature, I kind of just went because this is the type of track that by the end of it we are lined up single file, so we knew that if we were going to make any passes we needed to do it right away.”\u00a0 By lap 50 the young Vermont driver would find herself in the eighth position, and would battle the two cars in front of her for the next 60 laps.\u00a0 She would eventually move up to seventh when the caution came out with 10 to go.\u00a0 On the restart, Emily was able to make a move to advance to the sixth position, only to have the caution wave one more time.\u00a0 The green would wave for the restart on lap 141, and Emily would continue to hold on to that sixth position as she took the checkered flag.\u00a0 “My goal coming into this race was, last week we finished outside the top ten, so this week I wanted to finish inside the top ten,” Emily said, “and next week I’d really like to finish in the top five so we can keep progressing and growing as a team.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“This week I want to say thanks to Joe and Joey Polewarczyk, they did an awesome job getting the car ready this week.\u00a0 Joe Sr. was on the radio with me on Saturday<\/span> and it was nice to have him there to give me advice,” Emily said. “He coached me on how to drive the track, especially getting down into three and getting up off of turn four better than I ever have, so I can’t thank him enough.\u00a0 I also want to say a big thank you to my mom and dad, Shawn, Jamie Sr., Jamie Jr, Nate, Scott, Kasey, Brian, Nicole and Kevin for all their help at the track this weekend.\u00a0 I also have to send out a huge thank you to all my sponsors that help to make this happen; Northstar Fireworks, Packard Fuels, Rutland Regional Medical Center, Be The Match, Vermont Country Campers, Yipes! of Barre, \u00a0Berlin Optical Expressions, Creative Visions, Fecteau Homes and GossCars.com.”<\/p>\n

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Next up Emily and the Northstar Fireworks\/Packard Fuels team head to Thunder Road for the 18th<\/sup> Annual Merchant’s Bank 150 on Sunday May 1st<\/sup>.\u00a0 The weekend kicks off with the Barre Car Show on Saturday April 30th<\/sup> from 9 to noon<\/span>.\u00a0 From there the cars will parade up to Thunder Road for an afternoon of practice in preparation for the American Canadian Tour race on Sunday<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. \u2013 Seems a mid-week decision to run the 9x Northstar Fireworks\/Packard Fuels car at Lee USA Speedway this past Sunday was the right call for Emily Packard and her team as she posted a sixth place finish in the Governor’s Cup 150.\u00a0 “I think us working together (with the Polewarczyk’s) again this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,45,1,6],"tags":[42,1030,949],"class_list":["post-15919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-canadian-tour","category-lee-speedway","category-uncategorized","category-new-england-racing-news","tag-act","tag-emily-packard","tag-lee-speedway-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}