Michael Cherry made his debut at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway Saturday night, scoring a seventh-place finish for the No. 6 MBC Group Late Model.
Cherry’s Revolution Racing teammates Becca Kasten and Megan Reitenour were also on hand, finishing 12th and 13th respectively.
“We had a timing and scoring issue during our qualifying run that really hurt us tonight,” said Cherry. “We had a better car than where we finished and it’s a shame we couldn’t use that second qualifying lap to give us a better starting spot.”
Cherry’s second qualifying lap was not timed due to a technical mishap with the scoring system. He was able to make-up the lap after all other competitors had qualified, but wasn’t able to better his time on cold tires. He qualified ninth.
Cherry moved into eighth after the green-flag, and found himself running in seventh by lap 20 of the 50 lap feature. With 15 to go, Cherry was pressuring the sixth-place car for position. The two cars ran door-to-door for the final 10 laps, with Cherry pulling ahead by a nose several times. Despite his best efforts, he was unable to complete the pass and crossed the line seventh.
“Many thanks to (Crew Chief) Robert Huffman for coming over from the East car this weekend to help us out,” said Cherry. “He’s a champion at this track, and I can’t think of anyone better to have calling the shots for me here. I think we were able to put on a pretty good show for the fans tonight, and we’ll come back and get ‘em next week.”
Kasten, driving the No. 5 Late Model, started 11th and finished 12th after pitting under yellow on lap 29 to fix handling issues on her car.
Reitenour also battled handling troubles all night with the No. 1 Late Model, qualifying and finishing 13th.
“Everyone at Revolution Racing continues to work hard on our late model program,” said Blair Addis, Revolution Racing’s Director of Competition, Late Models. “We’ve learned a lot over the past few weeks that is only going to make us stronger moving forward. We had some bad luck to start the season, which we seem to have gotten out of the way, and we’re encouraged with the progress that all of our development drivers have made so far.”
Cherry, Kasten and Reitenour will race again Friday, April 23 at Tri-County Motor Speedway (Hudson, N.C.) before returning to Hickory on Saturday, April 24.
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