Ben Rhodes and the #9 Stanley / Alpha Energy Solutions Ford Fusion Marcos Ambrose Motorsport team headed to Newport Speedway (TN) on Saturday, June 16th, to race in the “Jeff’s Auto Sales 150” UARA-STARS Late Model Stock event. Qualifying 12th, Rhodes was looking to move forward during the feature, but a bottleneck on the start damaged his car, eventually forcing him off track and out of the race early.
On Friday, the team unloaded for four hours of practice at the Tennessee track. During the 5:30pm – 6:00pm mock qualifying time frame, Rhodes was fastest on the time charts.
“We worked on the car throughout the practice session, and then decided to make a mock qualifying run at the exact time we would be qualifying on Saturday,” explained Rhodes. “The car felt real good and was fast during the mock attempt, so we worked on a few more things before packing up for the day.”
Saturday the team unloaded the car, taking advantage of the two practice sessions to fine tune the car for qualifying and the race. At the end of the second session, Rhodes was the fastest on the charts heading into qualifying. Going out third, Rhodes timed in 12th fastest, which is not where he wanted to be.
“The car was a bit tight during qualifying, so that hurt a little. We set it that way to be better for the race since the cars are impounded after qualifying,” said Rhodes. “I just missed the line I wanted to run on the second lap of qualifying and it cost us some time on the track. Newport Speedway is very line sensitive during qualifying, and with the combination of being a bit tight and just missing the mark, we ended up 12th fastest.”
Entering the race, Rhodes knew he was back in a spot where he needed to keep his eyes open. Unfortunately the race went back right at the start.
“When the green flag flew, I ran up on the car in front of me. I backed off slightly, but then the whole line seemed to almost stop. Someone either missed a shift or something happened. I had nowhere to go and ran into the back of the car in front of me. It pushed the nose in, but we were still able to continue.”
“The lighting at the track is really dim, so I was trying to race hard while straining to see my gauges. We were good for a while and the car started to come in, but just after 20 laps a warning light came on, so I shut the engine off. The damage closed off the cooling to the engine, so before we blew the motor I had to come in and park the car.”
Rhodes was credited with a 22nd-place finish.
“The end result is not what we wanted, but we learned a lot this weekend,” said Rhodes. “There is nothing we can do to control what happened up in front of us at the start of the race. The entire Marcos Ambrose Motorsport team did a great job this weekend and it showed on the speed charts. We will have a great car when we come back to Newport Speedway in July.”
Next up for Rhodes and the #9 Stanley / Alpha Energy Solutions Ford Fusion for Marcos Ambrose Motorsport is the UARA-STARS Late Model Stock event at Hickory Motor Speedway (NC) on Saturday, June 23rd. For More on Ben Rhodes, visit his website at www.BenRhodesInc.com, and make sure to follow Rhodes on Facebook and Twitter for updates during the week and race day updates at www.facebook.com/benrhodesinc and www.twitter.com/benrhodesinc.