NASCAR-BGNN: Penfold Moves up to Sixth in BNS Points
12 August 1998
Bill Penfold, driver of the #0 NCT ProActive Pontiac, finished 11th in the Pepsi 150 NASCAR Busch North Series event at Watkins Glen International Saturday. The team ran into several problems through out the race, but never gave up and scored another hard-earned top 15 finish in the event.Penfold, a native of Yarmouth, Maine, started his ProActive Pontiac 20th in the event, and worked his way up as high as the sixteenth position when he started having problems. The car started handling poorly, and when a caution flag came out on lap 22, he came in for two tires and gas. Crew chief Bob Harrison also made an adjustment on the car.
The car started running better, but then lost first and second gear. Then at the halfway point in the race, the car lost a cylinder. All though Bill had to bring the car into the pits four times during the race, the team was able to keep him on the lead lap. Bill was able to keep the car out of the more than ten wrecks on the track as well. When the checkered flag came down on lap 62, Bill finished in eleventh place, on the lead lap.
"This team has really come together," said Penfold. "Something different every week happens to prove this team is great. We could have had a real bad day, but we kept at it and came out of the race in better shape than we might have. I think we were better off with the Pontiac, because the Monte Carlo would have been right up front with the leaders all day, and that's were all the wrecks were."
The eleventh place finish was good enough for Bill to move up to the sixth position in the season points standings. He came into the event in ninth position, over 40 points out of sixth. He is now just over 100 points from fifth place Kelly Moore.
"That was fantastic," said team manager Ray Penfold after the race. "They never gave up. This team is really on the verge of some big things."
Before the race, the team announced a sponsor, NCT ProActive, for the race at The Glen. NCT is the world leader in active noise control and wave management. Their products range from the ProActive line of industrial hearing protection and consumer Noisebuster headphone products to electronic devices to remove background noise from speech and a new line of Gekko home speakers. For information on NCT's line of ProActive 3000 headsets, call 1-800-278-3526.
As a show of appreciation to NCT, the team has decided to keep the company's logo on the hood for this weekend's race at Star Speedway in Epping, NH.
