Saturday, September 12, 2009

NASCAR Canada driver Anthony Simone in the groove with Stock Cars

Bradford, Ontario's Anthony Simone is a Canadian auto racing talent who has endured some career setbacks to become one of the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series' brightest stars of 2009. A stark contrast to his 2008 rookie season which observed Simone and his #95 Crown Modular/United Lumber Chevrolet appear like a fish out of water, the auto racing idiom of 'losing some in order to win some' appears to have translated the 30 year old racer. "There are 2 major ingredients we found this year." Simone relies. "The first one is the hiring of Giulio Montanari as car chief. With him on board and working together with my crew chief Thatcher Krupp the cars are much better prepared from the shop going to the race tracks. The second is the reliability of the new NASCAR spec motor. Those two things have helped our program tremendously."

As like many aspiring Canadian racers through the 1990s, Simone's auto racing background applies heavily to open wheel racing. As a teenager, Anthony Simone made a sensation in competitive karting as he locked up a provincial Ontario championship as well as Junior title in the World Karting Association in two years. Following those honours with an engagement in Formula 1600 with AIM Motorsports, Simone's driving accomplishments attracted the notoriety for a Toyota Atlantic test session with the well-associated open wheel team PPI Motorsports. Anthony Simone would once again snatch a championship title in the highly-prestigious Skip Barber National Championship, a series instrumental in the success of other young racing talents such as AJ Allmendinger and Marco Andretti. Winning a record 6 races in that season, Anthony Simone looked destined for the top-level open wheel spotlight. Instead of Indy Car ambitions, Simone returned to Canada and would reemerge as a stock car driver.

"I decided to make the jump when I was approaching companies for sponsorship in the open wheeled series, and most of them were interested in getting involved if it had of been a fendered car." Anthony Simone responds to the reason for his current ride in the #95 Chevrolet. He adds "Your asking for a lot less money and more exposure being an all Canadian series where the open wheel stuff in primarily in the U.S".

Sitting 5th in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series standing for 2009, Anthony Simone lists his two second-place finishes at Trois Riviere and Mosport as his two greatest achievements to date. As Anthony Simone comes into the Barrie Speedway's Torbram Electric 300 presented by The Source, he's content that he can reverse disappointing 2008 Barrie Speedway results. Despite a test session conducted by him and his #95 Crown Modular/United Lumber team the week prior, Anthony Simone's end result did not improve greatly on the 2008 races. Though starting on the pole and leading during the early going of the what he considers his home race track, Simone was spun out in one incident and suffered a flat tire causing a multi-car accident when he attempted to access pit lane.

However, while Barrie Speedway did not provide the ideal circumstances for a final three-race run to the end of the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series in 2009, Simone remains confident for his team saying “We would really like to win one of the last three races. We are still points racing, But we are going to try really hard to win one.”

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