London , ON (May 10, 2017)- With the 2017 Delaware Speedway season now here, Gary Adriaensen, driver of the #55 Dowler Karn Super Stock Camaro, is looking to regain his Championship title.
After finishing the last season third in points, he knows that extra work will be needed to get back on top. And that’s exactly what this winter has been all about. After the ending the 2016 season in a catastrophic crash when fellow competitor Darrell Lake, suffered complete brake failure, the car known as “Brittany” was was destroyed. Adriaensen decided that now would be the time to build a brand new car.
“I’ve never had a brand new car in all my 17 years of racing. I’ve always bought proven, used equipment from someone else. I decided after the wreck, if I was ever going to have the opportunity of building a brand new car, it was going to be now…” Adriaensen explains.
With the confirmed support of returning sponsors, Adriaensen bought a new MRE chassis. With the help of dedicated crew members, Dan Bugg, Dan Leonard and Jeff Denboer, they spent all winter putting together his first new ride and named her “Amber”. The 2015 Super Stock Champion goes on to explain “…since Lake and I both built new cars, our cars were again sisters, but this time twins. Lake went with ‘Alexis’, so I thought Amber for mine fit perfectly.”
At the opening weekend at Delaware Speedway, the Spring Nationals proved to be the perfect testing ground for the new car.
“We’ve done a lot of practicing and testing of different packages in pre-season, but this would be the first time in race conditions…” Adriaensen said after the event.
He finished the season opener with a respectable sixth place after starting the 35 lap feature event dead last in 19th place, that ran to completion without any cautions.
“We drove a good, clean race. The car was very fast. Unfortunately without any cautions to tighten up the field, it took awhile to get through traffic. After looking at the lap times, it confirmed that we never really fell off pace from the leaders. By the end of the race, we were closing the gap on third, fourth and fifth.”
Adriaensen says he was very happy with the results of the first time out with the new car and vows they will be ready to go for the first official points race at Delaware Speedway this coming Friday, May 12.
Adriaensen Motorsports is backed by long time sponsors Dowler Karn, Guild Electric, Concorde Distributing, Speedpro Imagining, PartSource, London Drive Systems and Fastenal. Adriaensen is also welcoming brand new sponsor, Doxtator Property Maintenance for the 2017 season.
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