Donny's News

There wasn't much question that Donny Lia had the car to beat in the 150-lap NASCAR Featherlite Modified Series event at the Thompson Speedway (CT) on Sunday. However, racing luck was not on the young New York driver's side, as he got caught up in someone else's wreck and exited the race on lap 86.

Despite the restart position, Lia knew that he could make it to the front again.

"We got ourselves in the back, but I was pretty sure that we had a car good enough to get back through the field if we stayed out of trouble," said Lia. "We ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

On the restart, Jeff Malave spun his #17 car and caused a traffic jam in the middle of the track. Lia made minor contact with the #13

of Christopher, but dove low under Malave to get pass the incident. He almost had the #17 car cleared, but got clipped in the right rear corner, resulting in heavy suspenion damage and a flat right rear.

"When we got into the back of Christopher, we had a little bit of trouble," said Lia. "It broke a bolt on the right front tie rod. We could have fixed that and still been ok. When we got hit the second time; that caused a lot of problems. It ripped the trailing arm mount off and bent the rear end. We were done."

Lia won't hang his head too low though. Saturday night, he'll be ready to battle at the next stop on the NASCAR Modified Series schedule - the year's second race at the Waterford Speedbowl (CT).

"Every week, this team gives me a great car," said Lia. "It's just a matter of keeping out of trouble to get a good finish. I think that next weekend at Waterford, we'll have another car

to beat. We'll just put this behind us and do our thing. We raced there earlier this season and even though we missed a little bit in qualifying, we had a car that was coming through the field quickly. My crew chief Kevin Crowley knows what to go back with and we'll apply what we learned last time to our car for this race. I know that we can all get the job done. Thompson is done with and we'll go into Waterford with the same killer instinct and try to win there."

The NASCAR Modified Series will be at the Waterford Speedbowl (CT) on Saturday, September 4th. Donny Lia and his Lia Motorsports Inc. team are competing for the 2004 Championship in the NASCAR Featherlite Modified Series this season. For more information on the team, please contact Matthew Dillner at (704) 231–7613 and be sure to visit DonnyLia.com.

The postponed race was resumed on lap 10. It only took one green flag lap for Lia to pull alongside Ted Christopher and contend for the lead. For the next 20 laps, Lia filled Christopher's mirror but did not attempt a pass. When he finally did on lap 41, Lia made it stick and took a commanding lead. Ten laps later, Lia had a 20-car length lead.

"The car was good," said Lia. "I kept putting pressure on Christopher and I was just waiting for him to use up his tires. I watched

him for a long time and changed my line on every lap, so he couldn't see what I was doing. He was trying hard to stay up front and he burnt up the tires. I set him up and made the pass. After that, I was just on cruise control trying to save the car."

On lap 79, the caution came out and Lia led all the lead-lap cars pitted for tires. A slow stop resulted in Lia exiting pit road in the 13th position.

"The guys on the team did a good job this week, but we had to move a few guys around for the pit stops and that hurt us," said Lia. "One of our guys couldn't make it to Thompson for the make-up date and we worked around that. This is not what we all do for a living and you'll have that."