23rd he and the FatHead Racing team led by Jamie Yelton seemed to have their stuff together. Poole practiced fast and then backed up his top speed with a great lap in qualifying putting his Marlowe Racing Chassis on the outside of the front row equaling his best career start. He then went on to lead the most laps and nearly pulled off the win. Poole said his shifter knob came off and he missed the shift on the restart and finished 7th.

Fast forward to July 11th for the Dwight Huffman Memorial at Hickory, a 177-lap race that featured drivers from all over the region and some of the biggest names in Late Model Stock Car racing and Poole again impressed. This time he would miss the first practice session due to an incident as he entered the track where another competitor ran over his right front fender as he was trying to get up to speed.

Second practice came and Poole was solid as he practiced fast and was looking forward to qualifying, but in qualifying the youngster only posted a 23rd place effort, but he knew he had a good car if he could avoid the wrecks that having 34 of the best Late Models on the track for this race would cause.

"We haven't been as good in qualifying this season as we want, but I think overall we're getting better," said Poole. "I knew we had a good car for the race, so it wasn't that big of a deal and then we just had to avoid the carnage."

Poole's view on the race was accurate, it's not about where you start, but rather making it to the finish that will get you a good finish. Poole had to dodge wrecks all night long as the 177-laps of green flag racing turned into a marathon event as the cautions came early and often. The first incident happened just a couple spots ahead of Poole on lap eight and he narrowly escaped it, but his closest encounter was just a handful of laps away.

Poole slid up against the wall to avoid the next wreck when the cars directly in front of him and behind him were both involved in the incident destroying their cars, but Poole continued. Before the lap 150 mandatory pit stop for fuel and small adjustments Poole's car had gotten the exhaust crashed and the tow knocked out, but the youngster soldiered on.

"We're just taking this thing one lap at a time and one race at a time, that's all we can do. We had a good run all race, we just had to dodge all the crashes and we missed a bunch of them tonight," concluded Poole.

Poole went on to finish sixth through all the crashes and through one of the most grueling races in Late Model Stock Car racing that destroyed many cars and ruined many drivers weekend. Poole survived and came out of the race with the best finish among true rookie drivers given that Poole only has less than 20 races in these cars under his belt and the same with his team with no pre-season testing.

Brennan is supported by Midas Total Car Care, TXAZ Auto Enterprise, Marlowe Racing Chassis, Tiger Rear Ends, Blake Carburetors and Bearden Oil Racing Fuels. Poole will be back in action this Friday night, July 17th at Tri-County Motor Speedway in the ninth of sixteen UARA-STARS Series races, the site of his only career win to date.

For more on Brennan Poole and the FatHead Racing Team, please visit his new website at www.brennanpoole.com or contact RaceBrand Driver Management at (276) 613-4208.