Myrtle Beach 400 Season Finale

David Polenz Wraps Up His 2011 Season At The Myrtle Beach 400

David Hanging With The Fans Pre-Race

1st Practice Day

Practice for the Myrtle Beach race started Thursday morning.
David took to the track for the first time in the FDJ Motorsports prepared car
in the second round of practice. After feeling the track out and running a few
laps, an engine miss showed itself and it had the team going to work right away
to find the problem, It didn’t take long to find it.

Crew Chief Mike Lee and Jeff Polenz Working On The Car

We had an issue with the carburetor, fortunately the FDJ
Motorsports team was prepared, they threw a new carburetor on the car and the
problem was solved. After that David went back out on the track and started his
education on how to get around the track. He started the day a little off the
pace but by days end he was in the top 20 on the speed chart.

2nd Practice Day

We all headed to the track early on Friday morning and had
to get the car through pre-event tech inspection. All went well and the team
reassembled the car and got ready for more practice. David took to the track in
the first round of practice and he proved to be a quick study, his lap times
were even better than the day before. For the last round of practice we bolted
on a new set of tires and sent David out to do a mock qualifying run. David
turned in what we felt was a pretty good lap and David was happy with the feel
of the car. After practice was over for the day the time sheet came out and
David was 8th quickest on the day. An awesome lap and only a couple hundredths
off the quick time. Not too bad since this weekend’s race was hosting the best
of the best in NASCAR Late Model racing and David was right in the middle of it
all.

Final Practice and Qualifying Day

Saturday morning started early again, we had to get the car
ready for an hour and half practice session and then prepare the car for
qualifying. Since we felt we had good speed for qualifying we decided to work
on race set-up. Myrtle Beach Speedway is known to be very tough on tires and
getting your car to be fast at the end of the race is important. We spent the
whole practice working on just that. Even though we were one of the few teams
that didn’t do a mock qualifying run during that practice, our lap times were
good enough for 17th on the speed chart. The qualifying rules were that the top
20 cars would get in on speed and the cars outside of the top 20 would have to
race a qualifying race on Sunday morning, 38 cars would make the field and the
track owner and NASCAR officials would choose some cars to be able to have a
provisional spot to start the race. With David’s speed we were confident he
would make the top 20.

Picture Courtesy Of Lake Anna Photography

David went out 28th to make his qualifying lap, the car
didn’t seem to be as good as when we practiced and he couldn’t back up his mock
qualifying run from the day before. Once all 59 cars took their qualifying run
it wasn’t good news; David ended up 27th quickest. This was very disappointing
and meant that we would have to race in one of the heat races Sunday morning.
The cars were impounded following qualifying so we didn’t get a chance to check
the car over. David said it had become very loose on exit and he couldn’t get
back to the throttle coming out of the corners. None of us got much sleep
wondering what went wrong.

Race Day

After not much sleep the FDJ and the David Polenz Racing
guys all got to the track early and waited for the time we could go over the
car. Mike, the Crew Chief, found that the right rear tire had grown almost 3
times as much as expected which increased the tire stagger (that will make the
car very loose on exit). We were able to move the tires around to different
spots on the car and that fixed the problem.

The Hot Rod Ready To Go

Now it was time for the heat race, David would be starting
4th. On the initial start before one lap was complete there was a caution. On
the restart David was able to make an awesome move making it three wide moving
into 2nd place and putting him along side of the leader coming out of turn
four. He ran side by side with the leader for a lap and coming out of turn four
the car developed an engine miss again, we made a pit stop but couldn’t fix it
and David finished last. At this point we were all disappointed but the team
went to work to fix the car while David, Frank Dieny and I went to find the
NASCAR people to try to get a provisional spot for the race. After about an
hour we got the word that we got a spot and would be starting 44th, dead last.
We feel we were lucky to be in the race, if we had made it in on time this
problem would have happened in the race and would have ended our day early.

The Race

We had a game plan
for the race and even starting last we didn’t change our strategy. The race was
going to be in two segments with a break at the half way point. Our plan was to
ride around the back and save tires until near the end of the first segment.
David did just that and with 15 laps to go in the first segment it was go time.
By the end of that segment David was in 13th place. It was a little further
forward then we wanted to be, but with a wreck amongst the leaders it moved us
up a few spots. At the start of the second segment we wanted to drop back a
little and ride but the traffic was heavy and it took about 20 laps to drop
back to an opening where David could ride. He rode it out there until 40 laps
to go when there was a caution. On the restart there was a lap car on the
outside of David and he raced us way too hard and it took David about 15 laps
to clear him, but the damage was done and he used up a lot of tire. As the laps
wound down David was in 13th and hoped to finish there, but there was a caution
late and the race restarted with a green, white, checkered finish. David held
on and got shoved up out of the groove and managed to hold on and finish 21st.
Unfortunately we couldn’t stick to our plan the whole race and we used up the
tires too soon. We had a car capable of winning but circumstances got the best
of us. We will take this as a learning experience and go back next year better
prepared.

That wraps up the 2011 racing season, it was an awesome year
and we had a lot of fun.

David Polenz Racing
and Polenz Motorsports want to thank all of our sponsors and please check out our sponsor page and support
them as they support us and make all of this possible.

We also want to thank our crew members for a great year, Bob
Moon, Terry Polenz, Brian Grupe, Derrick Gates, Brandi Grupe, Justin Workman,
Jordan Irving, Dave Moon, Moon Racing Enterprises Elaine Gates and our
post-season crew chief Mike Lee and FDJ Motorsports.

GREAT JOB FROM ALL OF YOU!

Thanks to all of our fans, family and friends for all of
your support.

We will keep you posted on our progress as we prepare for
the 2012 season.

Thanks from all of us at David Polenz Racing and Polenz
Motorsports.

David and Amanda Hanging Between Practices