Drake Survives ‘The Madhouse’ For Top-10 Finish

• NASCAR K&N Pro Series East Action At Bowman Gray Stadium
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (May 30, 2015) – For Nick Drake, the NASCAR Hall of Fame 150 on Saturday night became an event of trying to survive.

The 19-year-old driver of the No. 15 NAPA AUTO PARTS Toyota did just that to come away with a top-10 finish in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East race at Bowman Gray Stadium.

An issue in qualifying, coupled with getting tangled up with another car just before the midway point of the race, left Drake in survival mode at the tight, flat quarter-mile oval known as “The Madhouse.”

“I messed up a little bit in qualifying,” said the Bill McAnally Racing driver, who is in his second season in the series. “That put us behind from the beginning. In the race we were good until we got together with another car and it broke the truck arm mount.”

The impact shifted the entire rear end to the left in the car and affected its handling, said Drake, who hails from Mooresville, North Carolina.

“We pitted, but there was nothing we could do to fix it at that point,” he said. “So we were just kind of hanging on and letting people knock themselves out of the way or getting around them when we could.”

Nevertheless, Drake was able to make his way into the top 10 and was seventh in the final 50 laps.

“It wasn’t bad, considering everything that went wrong,” Drake said. “Our car was pretty torn up in the first half of the race. After that, we were just kind of hanging on.”

Drake faced more adversity in the closing laps, however, with contact from another car and then having the drive shaft in his car get up against the oil tank as he came to the checkered flag.

“I guess we got lucky making it 150 laps for as bad a shape as the car was in,” he said.

Drake’s 10th-place finish matched his finish at Bowman Gray in last year’s event, in which he got contact from behind while battling for second on the white flag lap.

Drake is seventh in the championship standings, with three top-10 finishes in five starts.

The NASCAR Hall of Fame 150, which was won by Scott Heckert, will be televised on NBCSN on June 4 at 7 p.m. ET. It was the fifth series visit to Bowman Gray.

Next up on the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East schedule is the K&N 150 at Langley Speedway in Hampton, Virginia on June 20.