MOORESVILLE NC (12-21-07) – Great Clips Racing’s Gabi DiCarlo is on the off-season fast-track. After a very successful test at Daytona Int’l Speedway last weekend, the Stringer Motorsports team traveled straight to USA Int’l Speedway in Lakeland, Florida Monday to gather data for the ARCA RE/MAX Series’ challenging short-track schedule.

Legendary Crew Chief Barry Dodson has been very busy in the off-season building new cars for the Great Clips Team and feels that their Daytona piece may be one of the best cars in the well-stocked stable. He’s been turning the wrenches on new short-track cars too.

“We had a great test at Daytona,” said DiCarlo.

“We’ve all been looking forward to getting this car on the track. Barry has been building new cars and the difference from last year is night and day. It should be real fast.”

But as prestigious as Daytona is, the second race on the 2008 ARCA RE/MAX Series schedule is at the Salem Speedway short-track where set-ups are critical to success.

So critical in fact that the team brought in Tallahassee, Florida driver Marc Mitchell, who filled in for DiCarlo at USA Int’l after the team experienced ignition trouble. As it turned out, DiCarlo, with a prior commitment, had to leave the test early. After DiCarlo and Dodson talked it over, and rather than scrub the test, the two decided to call on Mitchell to complete the job. Mitchell, who was at the time 400 miles away in Athens, Georgia, drove through the night to help the Great Clips team sort out their troubles. Mitchell was able to finish the job that DiCarlo has started and provide the team with quality test data for the grinding short-track schedule ahead.

Mitchell, who ran a partial schedule in 2007, finished a career-best second in the ‘07 ARCA 200 at Daytona.

DiCarlo is coming off an impressive season which saw the rookie driver finish 11th in ARCA RE/MAX Series championship points. DiCarlo will again compete fulltime in the series in 2008 beginning with the season-opening 45th annual ARCA 200 at Daytona Saturday, February 9th, LIVE on SPEED at 4:00 pm ET.

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[Source: arcaracing.com]