Ryan Lawler Picks Up Back-To-Back PASS South Wins At Hickory

Many of the teams that competed in the Easter Bunny 150 PASS South Super Late Model season opener at Hickory Motor Speedway (NC) had all winter to prepare and tweak their racecars. Ryan Lawler and his team only had less than a week to rebuild theirs. But they did a better job than anyone else of it. Lawler’s #31 was the dominant car in the event, easily scoring the victory on Saturday night.

The car that Lawler used was the same one that was heavily damaged the weekend before in the ASA Late Model Challenge Series event at Nashville’s Music City Motorplex. When it got back to the shop, one front frame rail was pointed up and the other one down. Lawler described the crossmember as looking like a corkscrew. In four days time, the team hung a new clip on the car and made it as good as new.

“We raced in Nashville last week and broke a front clip,” said Lawler. “We went back to the shop and had Monday through Thursday to get it fixed. We got it back

together and turned around to come back here, so we’ve been pretty busy.”

Lawler entered the Easter Bunny 150 as the most recent PASS South winner at Hickory. After a two-race string of bad luck to start out his ASA LM season, the thought of skipping Hickory was something that he didn’t even want to consider.

“No, we’ve been on way too much of a bad luck streak to quit now,” said Lawler. “You’ve got to race every week to get that out of your system and we really wanted to come back here. I can’t get enough of this place. It’s my kind of racetrack. It’s worn out, it’s fun and you’ve got to get up on the wheel. I like that.

“I knew that we were going to win some races, but I didn’t know we’d be this good here. I came here last year and ran fifth in my first Super Late Model race (last year’s PASS South “Easter Bunny 150”). Then we came back for the second PASS South Hickory race and won that. Now, we’ve come back and won again.”

In a field where there were traditional Super Late Models, ASA Late Models and even a former NASCAR Southeast Series machine, Lawler felt that having a slightly lighter car with a slightly less powerful engine under the PASS South rule package, helped him to win at Hickory.

“We qualified sixth and it was a little bit tough for qualifying, but at the end of the race I don’t think that

you can beat a crate motor when it comes to saving tires. That’s true at this place at least since it’s a tough old racetrack.”

Lawler will now head to Toledo Speedway (OH) for this coming weekend’s ASA Late Model Challenge event. He hopes that his team can start a win streak now that their bad-luck streak is behind them.

“We’re pretty pumped up,” said Lawler. “Now we’ll go on from here and see what we can do.”

For more information on Ryan Lawler, contact Matt Kentfield at (704) 788-2134 x5 and be sure to check out www.ryanlawler.net.