LIA HAS ULTIMATE RACER'S ITINERARY THIS WEEK
NASCAR Tour
Modifieds, SK Modifieds, USAR Pro Cup cars…all in the span
of a few days.
Sounds like the dream weekend for a race fan with a camper
ready to go and a few beers
sitting in the cooler, right?
Now Imagine
doing all of this armed with a helmet and driver’s suit
instead of a program and scanner. Donny Lia doesn’t have
to. Then again, the young racer probably doesn’t have much
free time to think about it anyway.
Lia started
his week on Sunday in the Spring Sizzler at Stafford Motor
Speedway (CT) with a day packed full of qualifying and
racing his #18 Lia Motorsports NASCAR Modified. In between
those two tasks, he had a 40-lap SK Modified race to run
behind the wheel of the #47 Clorox/Wisk
car.
Lia won the
pole for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour event, but had to
bypass the traditional Bud Pole Award photo shoot to hop
into the SK Modified for 40 laps of action.
Things didn’t
get off to a good start for Lia in that race. On just the
third lap, a major wreck in turn one sent Lia’s car
airborne. The car was still drivable and the #47 team was
able to get Lia back into the race at the tail end of the
field.
“Those guys
did a good job,” said Lia. “I came in and they fixed it the
best that they could. It helped that they built a really
strong car. The fact that we could just put a wheel and
tire on and get back out there was pretty good.”
Lia got
caught in another multi-car wreck a few laps later, but
recovered to finish seventh.
“That was a
fun race and I think that we could have made a lot more
progress in it if we didn’t have some problems. After we
bent something in the rear of the car, we got real loose and
we had something wrong with the motor. It had a few
stumbles there. It would stop running than it would run, so
we just got what we could there.”
The next
feature on the race card was the 200-lap Modified Tour race
and Lia was right there for that. However, some early
fireworks also soured his day in that race as well.
“The #1 [Rick
Fuller] came down on me and got the right front. It toed it
in pretty good. We came in and fixed it close enough. I
wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to keep going. For a
while, it wasn’t too bad. We were riding along.”
Towards the
end of the feature, Lia was in the top five, but with older
tires. He fell back a few spots with just a few laps to go
in the race and that led to a gusty decision with only ten
laps remaining.
“We had that
late yellow and this racecar doesn’t like caution laps,”
said Lia. “I knew that we would have been going back to the
back when the race went green. We had two tires left, so
even with a few laps left I thought that it would work out
for us. I didn’t realize how few laps of green we would
have left.”
The tires
made Lia fast enough to pass cars, but a wild three-wide
situation with three laps to go left Lia in a wreck that
ended with a hard hit into the frontstretch wall. Lia’s
race was done and he was left with a finish of 15th.
“These are
races of attrition,” said Lia. “I guess that we could have
ended up a lot worse if so many other people didn’t have
trouble before we did.”
Lia then
drove home to New York before catching an early morning
flight to Virginia the next morning. On Monday, he tested a
USAR Pro Cup car fielded by Rogers Motorsports at Lonesome
Pine Speedway. The results of the test were promising, with
Lia’s laps within a stone’s throw of the fastest car at the
open test. Lia will return to run that car in Saturday’s
Hooters Pro Cup event at the track. It will be his debut in
a full-bodied stock car of any type.
“I’m looking
forward to this race,” said Lia. “”I want to get as much
experience as I can in any type of fendered racecar and Pro
Cup is a great place to do that. My main thing right now is
to get acclimated to this type of car and if we have a good
finish on top of that, it’s a plus.”
The car that
Lia drove was fresh off of a third-place finish in the
Southern division of Pro Cup at Concord Motorsport Park (NC)
last weekend with Brad Rogers behind the wheel. Having a
top gun in Pro Cup helping Lia for his debut (which will
take place in the Pro Cup Northern division) is a huge
help.”
“Brad Rogers
and the Rogers family have been very helpful to me,” said
Lia. “I’m really looking forward to working with them this
weekend.”
But before
that event, Lia also has another SK Modified race to run.
He’ll compete Friday night at Stafford again before going
down south for the Saturday night USAR race.
Lia might be
busy, but his #18 LMI team that fields his NASCAR Modified
has a little down time ahead. With the Modified Tour not
returning to action until the May 27th race at
Stafford, the LMI team has some time to regroup.
“We are going
to make sure our cars are right and everything is in order
and ready to go,” said Lia. “We’ve been chasing our new car
this year. It hasn’t been comfortable and I’ve had to drive
it too hard. We’ll work on that.”
In 2005, Lia
and the LMI team are racing on the NASCAR Whelen Modified
Tour. For more information on Donny and the team, please
contact Matthew Dillner at (704) 231-7613 and be sure to
visit DonnyLia.com.
Source: Matt Dillner/Donny
Lia
PR
Posted: May 2, 2005
