With his finish at Pocono Raceway on Sunday, Loris Hezemans took another important step towards his NASCAR Cup Series license. In a race filled with several cautions in the first part, the Dutchman stayed out of trouble eventually finishing in a solid 27th place.
With no track time at all before the race at the 2.5-mile “Tricky Triangle” for his second NASCAR Xfinity Series start of the year, finishing was Hezemans’ goal as well as gaining some valuable experience. The strategy was mainly to get to know the track in the beginning and Hezemans, this time driving for the DGM Motorsports team with the support of Reaume Brothers Racing, struggled with understeer at the exit of the corners.
The team and the driver kept working on the car during pit stops and this even resulted in a 20th position at one point in the race. At the end of the race, the team had to deal with a possible rub between a wheel and the bodywork, something that eventually turned out to be a false alarm and a top 20 finish was the perfect end result.
“I am happy with the progress I made from Phoenix to Pocono, everything started to feel already more natural and I think we had a good short run car as we were at some points of the race in the low 20‘s positions. I am very thankful to DGM with the support of Reaume Brothers for their great support this weekend as well as providing me with a car which ran faultlessly. Now full focus is on RD 3 & 4 of the Nascar Whelen Euro Series at Brands Hatch,” said Hezemans.
The next race for Hezemans is next weekend. In Brands Hatch, England, he will be in action for rounds 3 and 4 of the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series championship. Hezemans defended his lead in this championship after winning both rounds during the opening weekend in Valencia.
Featured image credits: Danny Hansen / HMEDIA
