WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – John Holleman drove his family-owned No. 69 Modified into the top five and was riding patiently behind eventual 100-lap race winner Burt Meyers last Saturday at Bowman-Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. With 40 laps left in the race, a motor issue forced him to the sidelines and out of the event.
The five-time most popular driver at the stadium talked about his evening and his season after the event. “We’ve had some tough luck this year, that’s for sure,” he said. “Tonight was one of those nights. Practice and qualifying didn’t exactly go as we’d planned. We fought a terrible loose condition all day. We ended up qualifying tenth, but after the full field redraw for starting position, we were able to start second. On the initial start, I got a good jump on the inside pole car, but he forgot to turn left going into turn one, so I had my hands full and fell to seventh trying to gather the car back up.”
Having had a potential race win taken away from him with just a few laps left the week before off the front bumper of another car, Holleman immediately knew he needed to be patiently aggressive if he wanted to contend on this night. Trying to exercise a little grace under pressure, Holleman took a deep breath and began passing his way back through the field.
“We methodically worked our way back up to fourth. I was just patiently riding behind Burt. I felt like we had a faster car, but I wanted to save the tires a little longer. About lap 60, I look at the water temperature gauge and it was up over 260 degrees. That’s not good for the engine so I had no other choice but to park the car. Unfortunately, that pretty much ended our championship hopes, but we are surely not giving up on the season. We’ve one once this year and we are now going to switch our focus to wins and poles, starting tonight. We have a hard working team, a great group of friends who also are sponsors and the most awesome fans at the stadium, so our goal is to win as much as we can for the rest of the season and have as much fun as we can!”
If you cannot get to the track to see John race in person, you can watch all of the Bowman-Gray Stadium racing live each Saturday night via pay-per-view on FloRacing.com.
John’s marketing partners include Black Sand Company, A Lawn Crue, Thunder Road Grill, L&R Transmissions and Midway Mobile Services.
Keep up with John all year long at his website – www.j4racing.com. You can also like/follow him on Facebook (John Holleman Motorsports), Twitter (@JohnHollemanIV) and Instagram (@johnspeedemon).