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School’s Out and VanderLey is Back in His Racecar at Montgomery
Auburn University Student’s Summer Vacation Continues in SSS 125 Presented by ARbodies
In early May, the Southern Super Series presented by Sunoco made its first stop of the 2013 season at Alabama’s Montgomery Motor Speedway. Instead of being at the track with many of the same Super Late Model drivers that he battles with every year, VanderLey was at his Auburn University residence, where he was keeping one eye on the goings-on at Montgomery with his other on his studies as he prepared for the stretch run of the semester.
The 21-year-old VanderLey wanted badly to be at Montgomery back in May. But now that the school year is over and he maintained a 3.85 grade point average at Auburn, VanderLey is back in his Super Late Model and looking to get the VDL Fuel Systems-backed No. 2 machine up front in the Southern Super Series. His next opportunity to do so comes on Saturday, June 1 in the Southern Super Series 125 presented by ARbodies at Alabama’s Montgomery Motor Speedway.
“Class will always come first, but I'm home for the summer now and the race car is my sole focus for the next few months,” said VanderLey, a Mobile, Alabama native. “So we'll continue to make improvements and maybe even win one of these before too long.”
VanderLey enters Saturday’s Southern Super Series 125 presented by ARbodies off a season’s-best seventh-place finish in the series’ most recent event, May 25 at his home track of Mobile International Speedway. VanderLey started the season with a 24th-place finish in the season opener at Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville in Tennessee and later finished 14th at Georgia’s Gresham Motorsports Park, VanderLey has shown a marked improvement each time out with the Southern Super Series.
Now that the school year is over and VanderLey can focus solely on his racecar, the young driver believes that many aspects of his racing efforts can improve without having to juggle racing with schoolwork at Montgomery.
“We have raced at Montgomery twice in the past with not the best of results,” added VanderLey. “Both times we were running Pro Late Models in the Show Me the Money Series. One time we broke and were out early. The next time we were running sixth or seventh, just getting laps and ended up getting in a wreck.
“But we like the challenge of running their for the first time in a Super Late Model and with us coming off a good run a Mobile we are excited to go to the races for a second week in a row.”
With some added momentum from a top-10 finish at Mobile, VanderLey is hoping his recent string of bad luck is in the rear-view mirror.
“This season we have had horrible luck when we have raced, but at Mobile some good fortune did come our way even with missing a shift. We were just tight all night and I had to pitch the car sideways, dirt track style in order for it to turn. We're getting close. We actually haven't run well lately, so that finish was an improvement.”
The Southern Super Series 125 Presented by AR Bodies at Montgomery on Saturday, June 1st will also have the tracks weekly divisions of Open Sportsman, Buzz and Street Stocks. Ticket and hotel information can be found on the track’s official website, www.montgomerymotorspeedway.com.
For more information on the Southern Super Series presented by Sunoco, visit: www.SouthernSuperSeries.com. The Facebook page for the Southern Super Series is located at www.facebook.com/southernsuperseries and on Twitter follow @SoSuperSeries. For advertising or sponsorship questions, please contact the track representatives. For media inquiries, please contact Matt Kentfield at 51 Sports via matt@51sports.net
May 29, 2013
