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Pennsylvania 500July 28, 2002
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Derrike and the Quest Motor Racing team are busily preparing for the July 28 running of the Pennsylvania 500 at Long Pond, Pennsylvania. The #37 Ford will be sponsored for the Pocono race by M and R Productions and will feature a Poison paint scheme. Derrike and the team are very pleased with their testing at Indy. "We ran our new car at Indy for the two day test session. We struggled somewhat on our first day. After going through our process to improve handling and achieve greater speed we made great strides during our second day test. Actually, I anticipate that we can run in the 49s on sticker tires at Indy," Derrike commented. "I am grateful to M and R Productions and Friendly's for sponsoring our Indy test session. It enabled us to prove that we are capable of achieving substantial improvement in our program and to be more competitive each race. That is quite an achievement considering our funding limitations," Derrike added. In Friday's first practice, Derrike was 41st fastest with a time of 54.876 and speed of 164.006.
In qualifying, Derrike took the track as the tenth car and on the first lap ran a time of 54.814 and speed of 164.19. The second lap was faster and he produced a time of 54.591 and speed of 164.862. At the end of qualifying the time was good enough for 41st position where he will start the race.
In the second practice, Derrike was 39th fastest with a time of 55.908 and speed of 160.979. In Happy Hour, Derrike was 37th fastest with a time of 55.768 and speed of 161.383.
Derrike started the race in 41st position. Due to a couple rain delays and a major accident that red flagged the race for over an hour, the race was shortened to 175 laps. Derrike finished the race in 35th position.
Derrike said this about the race, "Regarding Pocono, I have to say that we were not really happy with how qualifying went but found some things that we felt would fix things for practice and Happy Hour, which went pretty well. We never put any new tires on for Happy Hour, nor did we put any on during the race. We just did not have enough money to purchase sticker tires for the event, so we thought that we held our own pretty well in the race under those conditions. As for the engine, it pulled the center out of a valve spring retainer, which ended our day. It did however do exactly what we intended for the race to do, and that was continue to provide more experience with the new set-ups, and more seat time for myself. This was a good effort to ready ourselves for Indy."
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