CHESLEY, ON- Josh Stade worked through a pair of broken gear sets to rattle off his first top-5 of the season, in Sauble Speedway’s 2014 opener.
“This night was a roller coaster, that’s for sure”, said Stade in post-race debriefing. “If my crew wasn’t as dedicated as they are, there’s not a chance we would have been racing tonight”
The Stade Motorsports team worked frantically throughout the afternoon, replacing a set of gears broken in practice, in time to win their first qualifying heat race.
“We won our first heat race, and just as we rolled back to the pit area, realized we had broken our back-up set as well”, explained ‘Prime Time’.
Fortunately, Sauble veteran Tom Gibbons stepped up, offering Stade a gear set to finish the evening.
“Tom [Gibbons] is a class act. I can’t thank him enough for the help”, said Stade. “The Gibbons team runs a slightly different gear than we do, so we couldn’t get off the corner as well as normally could with our setup”
“We’ll get a new set of gears ready for Week 2 and be ready to go”, smiled Stade. “We had a hotrod tonight. 5th place is nothing to scoff at, but had we not had the problems we did, there’s no doubt in my mind we would’ve been at the front with [winner] Jason Parker and [runner-up] Scott McTeer”
The 21-year old is quick to credit the work of his team, as the Stade Motorsports squad looks ahead to their next event.
“Brian MacDonald has been working steady on this car”, said the young veteran. “We’re only going to get better as the season moves forward. Sauble’s off until June 14th, so we’ll be at Sunset for their May 24th event. Sunset has some of the toughest competitor in the province, and we look forward to testing ourselves against their roster”
Stade Motorsports 2014 campaign is made possible thanks to support from MEI Paving, APC of Chesley & Hanover, Upper Canada Tile, Kunkel Bus Lines, Chesley Kinsmen and Ken’s Truck Painting.
To learn more about ‘Prime Time’ Josh Stade, visit the Stade Motorsports page on Facebook and follow Josh on Twitter @PrimeTimeStade.
By Spencer Lewis (@itsspencerlewis)
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