Donny Lia Pulls Out a Second-Place Spring Sizzler Finish

However, a smart racer knows that a truly successful day at the track is when they are able to get the best possible result with the car and circumstances that they have to work with. An extraordinary day is when they can get an even better finish than what was in the cards for them. Using those criteria, Donny Lia and the #18 Lia Motorsports, Inc. team had a great day during the running of the Spring Sizzler at Stafford Motor Speedway (CT). Lia might have finished second in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour event, but it was better than he probably should have ended up.

“You know what? The car shouldn't have finished second, so that is actually a really good day,” said Lia. “So we'll take it, definitely, it was a good run. Today I just didn't have a car that could attack with. It was a matter of getting whatever we could get. The car really wasn't that great all race, and we put ourselves in position with pit stops and it paid off in the end, you know, we finished second and we shouldn't have. So it's actually a really good day for us. You know we would have liked to have won, but we'll have to wait until another day.”

To finish second, Lia relied on some shrewd calls and quick action from his team. Lia and eventual race winner Doug Coby pitted on lap-72 and their pit strategy proved perfect when it came to how the race unfolded.

“The guys made great calls in the pits, especially coming in when we did,” said Lia. “I mean, track position is always huge here at Stafford.

What makes that especially impressive is that Lia and the majority of his crew are only on their second NWMT race together.

“The whole team and I have some good chemistry. Everybody is working together. The guys work really hard. We’re a young team, which I really like. Everybody is young and very enthusiastic. They're here to race and win. They don't care about anything else. They don’t care about partying, they come to race. That's what we need, you know, so we can stay focused and have good finishes every weekend and have fun doing it. I'm just proud of them, you know, they did a good job.”

“Doug did a good job, they had a good car,” said Lia. “They were better than us at the end. He was just better off the corner than I was on both ends and I could get close but not enough, I was doing everything I could, trying to find different lines or whatever, and we didn't have a car. I was hoping he'd make a mistake there, and he didn’t so good for him. He got his first win in a big race and that's a good deal.”

What Lia didn’t want to do was to try and bump and run maneuver on Coby to steal the victory.

“It was never in my mind to rough him up. If I was going to pass him, I was going to pass him because I was better than him. Unless it was like a lap car just screwed him, and the

door was wide open and I just filled a hole. But I wasn't going to force the issue. He gave me a lot of room there when I was on the outside of him on one of the restarts and I thought that was pretty cool. I was showing some courtesy back, so I gave him a little room so he could work some lap traffic. I mean, I didn't give him room, but I didn't get into him. I could have, but I wasn't going do it that way. It was just good clean racing.”

Lia’s next event will be the Connecticut Classic 150 at Stafford Motor Speedway for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour on May 26th.

In 2006, Lia will compete on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour with his #18 LMI team as well as in a schedule of ARCA RE/MAX Series events for Hagans Racing.

For more information Donny Lia, please contact Matt Kentfield at (704) 455–2051 and be sure to visit DonnyLia.com.