Steckly Ends the Season with Ninth Place Run at Kawartha

Courtesy Kyle Erb

Scott Steckly driver of the Erb Group/ International Truck and Engine Pontiac Grand Prix was looking to finish this 2005 CASCAR Super Series season off with a good run this past weekend at Kawartha Speedway. The Erb Group team had to use their backup engine after blowing their primary motor last weekend at Cayuga. Steckly qualified the car in 20th out of 29 cars for the season finale.

The race was held on Sunday, September 18th under sunny skies just outside of Peterborough. Early on in the race the lack of power was evident as Scott struggled just to hang on to his 20th place standing. The biggest story of the race was the driving by #17 DJ Kennington, who at one point in the race was close to lapping the entire field after a long green flag run. The #22 Erb Group car pitted under caution on lap 97 to change a left rear tire and add fuel to the car. As the race went on Steckly continued to move up positions. Although he was 2 laps down to the leader Scott was in 12th place by lap 150 of 250. On the race teams second pit stop they changed the right rear tire on the car. Scott was continuing his was to the front and by the 210th lap he was up into 8th place, ahead of Dave Jacombs and rookie #75 Kenny Habul. It was an exciting finish as veterans Steckly and Jacombs tried to avoid holding up the lead lap cars and still race hard for position. However, rookie Habul was bouncing off everyone fighting for positions but eventually faded back to 10th place.

After the race Scott said “it was great to end the season with a top- ten finish. This year we’ve had great equipment and then something breaks and we get a poor finish. Today, we had an underpowered race car, but with good calls in the pits by crew chief Ken Gropp Jr. we were able to get the most out of the car. I’m really proud of the job the crew did on the car this weekend”. He also said “I would like to thank all of our sponsors for this year; we really appreciated all of their help in making this CASCAR Super Series season a success for 22 Racing”.

Don Thomson Jr. went on to his unprecedented 5th consecutive CASCAR Super Series championship last weekend at Kawartha.

Scott Steckly and the entire 22 Racing team are proudly sponsored by: The Erb Group of Companies, International Truck and Engine Dealers: ALTRUCK, Lewis and Metro; Thermo King of Eastern Canada, CPL Systems, AW Millwrights, Chris Root Precision Machine, D.H. Jutzi Limited, Commercial Babcock, Classy Collectibles, Twin City Graphics, Filtakleen, Duplicolor, Mr. Transmission (Guelph), and Stratford Motor Products, Holiday Inn Express (Calgary and Toronto Airport Area).