Benjamin Pedersen’s day in the No. 55 Sexton Properties Chevrolet did not go as smoothly despite being 15th quick in the morning warmup, making him optimistic for his chances in the 85-lap race.
However, the first issue surfaced with a steering wheel that had to be replaced on the first pit stop on lap 22. A miscommunication from the pits resulted in a drive-through which combined with taking the Turn 1 runoff escape route around lap 46, caused the young Danish American to lose a couple laps. However, he remained upbeat and is looking forward to running at Barber Motorsports Park in two weeks.
“Unfortunately, not a very smooth race for us,” Pedersen said. “Started out great with our warm up today. We were very competitive, P15. Very honest lap time in terms of how much Push to Pass we used and everything. However, in the race we just had a lot of internal issues with a couple of things with the car, etc., and an unfortunate penalty. We’re going to take what we learned and move on. On the bright side, we had very good pace in the race. Top-10 pace for sure. We’ll just keep working really hard and get the little kinks fixed, and onwards to Barber.”