Hopes for a Strong Run Deflates at Iowa for Hunter Robbins

Pro Cup Series Race Recap from Iowa Speedway

With just a few races remaining in the 2008 USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series schedule, Hunter Robbins is looking to finish up the year strong in his rookie season with the series.  His team loaded up the #6 machine and made the long haul to Iowa Speedway (IA) for the event at the track this past Saturday.  Unfortunately a vibration with the car forced Robbins to pit and he could never make up the time on the track, relegating him to a 15th-place finish.

"We felt like we were going to have a pretty good car," said Robbins.  "We were able to stay in the top 10 in practice and sometimes we were up in the top five, so we thought we were going to have a pretty good car. 

"We qualified ninth and during the start of the race, we struggled to get it right where we wanted it.  Then we had to make an unscheduled green flag pit stop because we were having issues with tires and I was having real bad vibrations.  It felt like I had a tire going down, so we had to come in and take tires and lost two laps.  Throughout the race we weren’t able to make the laps back up. It was unfortunate because we felt like we had a top-10 car; we just couldn’t get our laps made back up so we couldn’t really show what we had.”

With the car in one piece, Robbins and the team headed back south after the event with their heads held high, knowing that they had a strong car, regardless of the laps they lost in the pits.

Originally Robbins was scheduled to run his Super Late Model in Florida and Alabama this weekend, but the team has decided to skip the events to put the focus towards the Pro Cup race coming up next month.

"We were planning on going to Pensacola (FL) and Mobile (AL), but we made the decision Sunday not to because we had to buy a transmission and some other stuff while we were up in Iowa.  We’re just going to skip those races and keep focusing on the Pro Cup Series.”

Hunter Robbins' next race will be in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series event at Southern National Raceway Park in Kenly, North Carolina, on Saturday, October 18th.\