Denver, NC – Christian Calvo has climbed the ranks with Lee Faulk Racing for the past two years where he started competing in the Limited Late Model Division at Hickory Motor Speedway in 2011. The 2012/2013 season would see Calvo make the move to the highest division of Late Model Stock with his team, taking over driving duties from previous driver Pietro Fittipaldi.
Calvo would come into this past weekends race coming off of a 5th and 6th place finish in his last two starts. The day would start off great for Christian and his team, as they were the fastest car in both practice sessions for the day. Qualifying would be no different for the twin 50 lap feature events. Calvo qualified 3rd for race #1 and would also scored his first career pole award for race #2 with a fast qualifying lap of 15.28 seconds.
Calvo quickly moved into second place in the first race and ran hard to run down the leader. Contact with a competitor 20 laps into the race would force Calvo to the pits with major body damage. Crew Chief, Michael Faulk would make the call for Calvo to stay in the pits for the remainder of the race since they were laps down and needed to make repairs to the car. The team worked hard to get the car back straight and the bent parts replaced.
Christian would start on the pole for the 2nd race and when the green dropped he put a full straight away lead on the field. After a couple red flags due to major incidents on the track Calvo would lose the lead to Ashley Huffman.
Huffman would restart on the outside for a green, white, checkered finish. Calvo made a charge on the white flag driving into turn 3 and was able to edge out Huffman at the line by inches to score his first win of his career as well as the first win for his country of Venezuela in a NASCAR sanctioned oval event.
“ I am really proud of the effort and will to win Calvo has shown me over the past two years. He has kept his goals in mind and not let any outside influence stray him from his path. Hard work has paid off for him and this is just the first of many to come for us as a team with Calvo.” Crew Chief and car owner Michael Faulk said about the win.
Christian Calvo will be back looking to make it two wins in a row at Hickory Speedway on June 29, 2013. Calvo currently sits 5th in points and is making a strong push for the championship the second half of the season. Find more info on Christian Calvo and LFR on www.leefaulkracing.com