Whitt Heads to Irwindale with Goals

for Season Close at Hand

August 2, 2002, El Cajon, California: With just four races remaining in the Featherlite Southwest Series, NASCAR Touring season, nineteen year old driver Brandon Whitt is on track to achieve both his goals for the season: winning Rookie of the Year, and finishing top ten in overall points.

Brandon's 14th place finish at Madera last weekend moved him from eleventh to tenth in the
overall standings, and he left Madera with a five point advantage over his only remaining rookie competitor, Steve Belletto.

Before the start of the season, Brandon sat down with his family-run Clean Line Racing team and established two goals for their first Southwest Featherlite campaign: winning Rookie-of-the-Year, and finishing top ten in the overall championship.  Both Brandon and father Dan, who owns the team, determined that the best way to accomplish these goals was to focus on  successfully qualifying for every race.  Two-thirds of the way through the season, Brandon is one of only nine drivers to have qualified for all ten Southwest Featherlite events, and he has yet to use a provisional.

"At any given race, you'll see ten or more cars going home without making the main event," Brandon explains.  "Just last week at Madera, for example, 34 cars turned up for only 22 slots.  Being sent home is one of the very worst feelings in racing, and we as a team are determined to make the show at every event that we enter."

Brandon and his El Cajon based team head to Irwindale looking forward to familiar scenery, after making their debut at several tracks in Northern California over the last month.  "Irwindale is a fast fast track, with two grooves," says Brandon.  "It's fun to pass there, and the track is very wide. We raced at Irwindale last year in Super Late Models, and I've found that if
you can get your car to work on the bottom of the track, you're definitely
going to move forward."

Brandon and the Clean Line Racing team will test at Irwindale on Friday, August 2, and return one week later for the race on Saturday, August 10th.

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