Josh Hamner Gets Through The Rattler to Finish Sixth

Pensacola, Florida's Five Flags Speedway has become sort of a second home for Alabama native Josh Hamner over the years. The young racer has made the Five Flags half-mile his primary focus in recent seasons and it paid off the most in 2008, when Hamner scored the Blizzard Series Super Late Model championship.

Never one to settle on current successes, Hamner will be out in full force with eyes not only focused on defending the Blizzard title, but also scoring the laurels in the Miller Lite SLM Series at Mobile International Speedway.

Both series open their seasons on April 10th and 11th and Hamner is pulling out all the stops in hopes of success at both tracks.

"We've built a brand new Lefthander car, built from the ground up," said Hamner. "It’s got a brand new ARP body on it. We rubbed on it pretty good and changed a few things that we hit on last week in the ASA race. We’re really looking forward to unloading off the trailer and being pretty good. You’re going to have some new-car gremlins that we’re going to shake out in a test session on Wednesday so that they don’t show up come Friday and Saturday.

"We’re going to race here in Pensacola on Friday, then we’re going to go over to Mobile with the WCIParts.com car and hopefully come away with the Gulf Coast Championship at both tracks. I’m going to try it. We haven’t raced at Mobile as much as we would’ve liked to in the past, but Roger and Bobby Reuse they’ve given me an opportunity to go out there and do it right. It’s a pretty sweet deal."

Hamner's regular-season hopes include race wins and the titles at both tracks, but all of the hard work over the next few months will be done in preparation for the 42nd Annual Snowball Derby in December at Five Flags.

"This year’s definitely going to be a little bit different for us. Last year, we accomplished nine of the 10 things we had on our list of things to do. We won races at Five Flags, won the Championship and we came oh-so-close to winning the Derby. This time last year, we were getting ready to do the same thing, but hopefully we’ll set the tone for this year on Friday night with another win. Last year, I was the first race’s winner. That set the tone for the year and we hopefully will do the same thing this year."

The Blizzard Series season will kick off on Friday, April 10th at Five Flags Speedway, while the Miller Late Super Late Model Series will see its first green flag on Saturday, April 10th at Mobile. Both races can be heard live on RaceTalkRadio.com.