Jake Garcia tallied his eighth top-10 finish of his rookie campaign on Sunday afternoon at The Milwaukee Mile with a ninth-place result. The driver of the No. 35 Adaptive One Chevrolet Silverado RST posted his second top-10 run in the last three weeks in his first trip to the Wisconsin State Park.
Garcia stopped the clock at 30.05 seconds in qualifying to start ninth, his third top-10 qualifying effort in the last four events. The 18-year-old fired off with a tight balance at the drop of the green flag but held a position inside the top-10 for 34 laps of the opening stage. As the first run wore on, his Adaptive One Chevrolet trended progressively tighter and was scored 13th at the end of Stage 1 on lap 55.
Under the stage caution, crew chief Mark Hillman called for four tires, fuel, and two chassis adjustments to loosen Garcia’s balance for the second 55-lap segment. Garcia restarted 20th on lap 61 and began to break free of the logjam in traffic roughly 30 laps later. The No. 35 Chevrolet came alive past the halfway point as Garcia advanced to 16th by the end of Stage 2 on lap 110.
Garcia took his second set of tires under the second stage caution and restarted 20th on lap 119. After running 11 green flag laps, a caution on lap 135 opened a window for many of the lead lap trucks to take their final set of sticker tires. Hillman called Garcia to pit which allowed him to restart 13th on lap 141, and was the seventh truck on fresh tires. Garcia used the new skins to his advantage to rejoin the top 10 by lap 155. He continued his march forward and claimed the ninth position on lap 160. He ran the final 15 circuits in ninth to claim his eighth top-10 result of the season.
Jake Garcia Quote:
“We had another solid finish today with the Adaptive One Chevrolet. We were too tight to start the race, but a couple of the adjustments we made improved the truck as the day went on. We got buried in the field around halfway and track position was hard to regain once you lost it, but taking tires in the final segment gave us a chance to gain some spots back during the last run. Overall, it’s a good finish for our team. We definitely have some speed to race inside the top-five over these last five races this year.”
McAnally Hilgemann Racing PR
