Vanderwyst Motorsports / EXIDE Racing - Cayuga Report

Cut tire drops Vanderwyst from 9th at Cayuga

LONDON, ON - Although the final race result wasn't what he'd hoped for, 
Pete Vanderwyst drew a lot of satisfaction from the major role his 
Vanderwyst Motorsports team played in making the 'Canada Day Shootout' the 
huge success it was. In the end, participating in CASCAR's biggest ever 
race somewhat tempered the Exide Pontiac driver's disappointment at 
finishing 37th in the final 100-lap feature event.
	While running ninth with 10 laps to go in the race, Vanderwyst suffered a 
flat right-front tire, which sent his car hard into the outside retaining 
wall on the backstraight. The St. Thomas, ON racer emerged unscathed, but a 
broken upper ball joint meant that his race was finished. Scored 37th in 
the results, Vanderwyst will head to this weekend's Molson Indy Toronto 
street race in ninth place in the CASCAR Super Series standings, at the 
midway point of the 2002 season.
	"My front-right tire blew out," explained Vanderwyst, after the race. "The 
team worked so hard for this race. In our first 50 lapper, we had a miss in 
the engine. We thought we had a carburetor problem, so we brought it in and 
worked on it. We changed it and still had the problem, so we changed the 
fuel pump. It turned out we had a little piece of something in the fuel 
pump. We even got into the fuel cell looking for the problem. But the guys 
found it and they fixed it for the feature. We had a really good piece 
there for most of the race."
	After starting 33rd in the field 44, the Exide Pontiac driver was up to 
ninth when he felt a problem developing with the tire. "We tightened it up 
for the race, but after that last caution - by the time we were caught up 
to [Dave] Whitlock - the tire was already going down. It was one of them 
deals. We had a good hot rod today."
	In addition to racing in the unique event, in front of 15,000 enthusiastic 
racing fans at Cayuga, Vanderwyst Motorsports also prepared the Home Depot 
Pontiac of visiting Winston Cup star Tony Stewart, as well as the Valvoline 
Pontiac of Johnny Benson.
	"It really stretched us getting all of the cars ready for this race," 
continued Vanderwyst. "Sam Rounce brought his car under our banner for the 
race and helped us a lot in getting the car ready for Tony Stewart. Some of 
my old guys who used to take care of our cars on a regular basis also came 
out today, and looked after [Johnny] Benson's car. I want to thank them all 
for helping to make this happen." In the end, Stewart and Benson finished 
11th and 13th, respectively.
	Looking at the big picture, Vanderwyst knows that the race was a major 
milestone for stock car racing in Canada. "What a show! The fans got to see 
a really good race. It was a great night for CASCAR and I was very happy to 
be part of it."
	Vanderwyst continued, "We want to thank Exide for all their support. And 
thanks to our longtime sponsor Loctite, who came back to support us for 
this race and at the Toronto Molson Indy. And Valvoline was on Johnny's 
car, which we really appreciated."

NEXT RACE: The CASCAR Super Series returns to the streets of Toronto this 
coming weekend for their fourth appearance at the Molson Indy. Pete 
Vanderwyst finished second in the race in 2000 and is looking forward to 
returning to the scene of one of the best results of his racing career. 
Qualifying for the CASCAR race starts on Friday, while Saturday's feature 
race is scheduled for 4:45 p.m.