Jody Lavender and Steve Bird Join Forces for 2005
 

Hartsville, SC (2005) - Jody Lavender Racing announced today that four time NASCAR Busch Series Championship winning crew chief Steve Bird has been hired as crew chief for the 2005 racing Season.

Lavender will compete in the Hooters Pro-Cup series again in 2005 and he says "I'm very excited to have Steve ("Birdie") join us. He has the experience and expertise we need to have a winning season. We had a good car and had some good races last year, but we had problems finishing. We think the biggest problem was that we did not have a full time crew chief and Steve will fill that spot. Also we were new on the Hooters Pro-Cup series last year and most of the tracks were new to us because it was the first time we had raced on them."

Bird worked with the Jay Fogleman team in 2004 in the Pro-Cup series and helped Jay to a 6th place finish in the points. In addition to his Pro-Cup experience, Bird was the crew chief when Randy Lajoie won the NASCAR Busch National Championship and was also crew chief for Johnny Benson & Steve Grissom.

Lavender said "we will have 3 cars ready, and will run the full schedule in the Southern Division plus we plan to run 3-4 races in the Northern Division to help us in the championship races at the end of the season. We also have heard that the NASCAR Busch North series will have some races in our area and hopefully we can participate in some of them in our Busch car."

In 2004 the Hooters Pro-Cup series had drivers competing that could be in the "Who's Who" of short track racing including such names as Bobby Gill, Billy Bigley, Jr., Jeff Agnew, Johnny Rumley, Jay Fogleman, Jason Sarvis, Gary St. Amant, Mike Laughlin, Jr., Benny Gordon, Shane Huffman & Clay Rogers.

The field gets even better this year with the addition of Steven Wallace, son of Rusty Wallace, Mark McFarland in a Dale Earnhardt, Jr., machine, Mike Garvey former ASA star, and a Michael Waldrip owned car.

The Hooters Pro-Cup series opens on February 26th at the USA International Speedway in Lakeland, Florida and ends November 26th at the same speedway in the final race of the 2005 championship. Races on our schedule are Greenville Pickens Speedway on April 2nd, Concord Motor Speedway on April 23rd, Myrtle Beach Speedway on June 25th, Hickory Motor Speedway on July 9th and Southern National Speedway in Kenly, N.C. on July 23rd. The series will also compete again at the famous Bristol Motor Speedway on August 24th

Lavender also said he would like to thank Hartsville Community Bank and H&R Block for their sponsorship in 2004 and look forward to having them back in 2005. Probably the only thing missing for our team is a major sponsor and we are aggressively looking and talking with potential sponsors, to help us be more competitive and to help them promote and improve their business.

The Hooters Pro-Cup series has both a Northern and Southern Division. At the end of the season the top 30 drivers in each division compete in a 5 race series for the National Championship.

 

[Top]