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Stephen Allard falls two spots short of transferring into Gold Cup A-main

By Gary Thomas

Chico, CA - September 10, 2007...Silver Dollar Speedway champion Stephen Allard was looking for good things at the 54^th annual Gold Cup Race of Champions and although he didn’t make the feature on Saturday night, he gave it a good run coming up just shy of transferring into the main event.

Stephen’s preliminary qualifying night came on Thursday and it began with a small, but tough break to the weekend picture when it came to timed qualifications. The top 16 cars in qualifying make the heat race inversion and with the top two in each heat making the dash, it puts more importance than ever to get into the inversion.

Stephen cut a 12.089 in qualifying, which put the Cross Creek Trucking, Finley Farms, JP’s Paint & Body No. 1m, 17^th quickest out of the 47 cars in attendance. Missing the inversion by just one spot was tough to swallow and forced him to get up on the wheel in his heat race. The Chico native did just that to earn a fourth place finish and transfer the Chico Inventory, Johnny’s Lock & Safe, Platinum Powder Coating machine into the 30 lap main event. Starting 17^th in the feature, Stephen worked his way up to 13^th on a pretty much single file racing surface.

When points were tallied for Saturday night, Stephen found himself starting on the inside of the fourth row in the 20 lap B-main event. The top four finishers would transfer into the Gold Cup Race of Champions main event and Stephen worked his way forward early on. A two groove race track made for some exciting racing, but there was a large and wicked cushion that had developed, which gave Stephen problems as the race wore on.

By the halfway point Stephen worked his way up to fourth, but a restart saw Danny Lasoski slip underneath him when SA bobbled on the cushion. The rest of the B-main saw Stephen hang around the transfer spot and was part of a solid battle until slipping off the backstretch with a handful of laps left. The final lap saw him get around Jason Sides to bring home a sixth place finish aboard the NewYorkCityBillboards.com, GME Steering, Butler Built Performance, Rocket Chassis No. 1m.

The Gold Cup didn’t turn out how Stephen and 1m Racing would have liked, but the team gave it a hard run and finishing sixth in the B-main at an event that saw 103 cars compete is nothing to hang your head at. There has been some talk of putting a 360 in the 1m machine for the some races to finish out the year. Stay tuned to http://www.stephenallard.com for updates.