The No. 1 Best Performance car driven by Josh Richards
On the surface it appears as if Josh Richards and his Best Performance Motorsports team had been experiencing a good start to the 2018 season until Thursday night in the World of Outlaws Late Model Series event at Florida’s Volusia Raceway Park. After setting the second fastest time in Group B qualifying and then winning that night’s fourth heat race, the No. 1 team had to scratch from the feature race due to mechanical problems related to the car’s engine. Richards eventually drove the Late Model machine normally piloted by Sprint Car ace Donny Schatz in the feature until it overheated and was forced to retire.
Those mechanical gremlins had not been the only ones to bite Richards and his team during Georgia-Florida SpeedWeeks. In the second race of the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series portion of the three-week time period spent in the southeastern corner of the country, BPM suffered an engine failure in their heat race at Golden Isles Speedway that forced them to a backup car for the B-main. In that B-main, a power steering issue caused Richards to pull off track before the green flag ever waved and relegated him to the tail of the starting grid with a provisional for the main event.
Remarkably, Richards raced from the 26th starting position on that Saturday night to capture the checkered flag and a $12,000 paycheck. The defending LOLMDS champ had also won the night before in the series season opener.
While drivers and teams want to do well in every race they enter, it is critical for them to be at their very best when racing with the series on which they intend to compete for a championship. With the WoO Late Models not being their primary series, Richards and Best Performance opted to leave Volusia after their Thursday night troubles so that they might focus their efforts squarely on the Lucas Oil campaign.
The Josh Richards(@Josh_Richards1) Twitter account made the following statement:
“After hurting 2 motors this trip, Team BPM is headed to the engine builder’s shop to get things fixed so we will be ready to points race @AtomicSpeedway. Josh will stay @VolusiaSpeedway and race a second car for @RocketChassis Friday and Saturday. Look for the green No. 1.”
Best Permance Motorsports(@BPMotorsports1) also tweeted:
“We had a super fast car all of Speedweeks, hated to leave @VolusiaSpeedway, but @lucasdirt points racing is our priority. We’ll get the motors fixed so we will be ready to go to @AtomicSpeedway with Josh. Can’t wait to be back at it!”
Richards did in fact race a second Rocket Chassis house car for his father Mark Richards on Friday night at Volusia where he finished the feature in the 14th position.
It should be noted that Best Performance uses engines from Durham Racing Engines. Those power plants have propelled not only Richards but Jonathan Davenport, Kyle Bronson, Scott Bloomquist and Brandon Sheppard to a total of ten Georgia-Florida SpeedWeeks victories so this does not appear to be a widespread issue, but rather, a team making sure it is fully prepared for the long season ahead.
