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Mason Diaz To Forgo Full 2019 K&N East Slate Following South Boston Crash

www.arcaracing.com May 19, 2019

When the K&N Pro Series East rolls into Memphis next weekend, they‘ll be without Mason Diaz.

And most likely for the rest of the season, as Diaz confirmed to NASCAR.com that he and the No. 24 MAD Motorsports team will not run the full 2019 schedule, as previously planned.

“The main reason would be it‘s traveling to those races now,” Diaz said. “Traveling costs money, and now we‘ve fallen out of points.”

Diaz didn‘t get the chance to start either WhosYourDriver.org Twin 100s at South Boston Speedway after crashing in practice while attempting to navigate around the lapped car of Ron Jay.

“We looked at the damage and it didn‘t look that bad,” he said. “Once I realized we had too much damage to race, it was kind of mind blowing. Getting taken out by a car that really shouldn‘t be on the race track with us. The guy gave me the outside lane going into Turn 3, but he decided to come up and wreck us. Not really much we can do. We learned our lesson as a team that we won‘t go to a track without two cars ready to go.”

The team did not bring a backup car to South Boston Speedway, forcing them to withdraw from both events. Once the conversation surrounding that weekend concluded, Diaz, who had finishes of 14th and eighth coming into the third and fourth events of the season, and the team began conversing about the rest of 2019.

Racing-Reference: Mason Diaz Career Statistics

“Before we left South Boston we had that decided,” he said of not running the full schedule. “We were going to run the full season, but now we‘re going to run some select races throughout the year, not the full season though. I want to run Dover and the second Bristol race.”

Diaz also added the fact that SoBo was a double points weekend, with two races instead of one, factored into the decision to scale back.

“The double points night definitely went into it more,” he said. “If it was just one race, we might have looked at it differently. That‘s a ‘what if‘ though. We could have gone to South Boston and gotten wrecked out in the race. It was all about how the race went and that weekend for us wasn‘t what we were expecting it to be. We‘ll move on with the season.”

Next up for Diaz will be the Xfinity Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The Manassas, Virginia native will pilot the No. 86 Chevrolet for Brandonbilt Motorsports in his second NXS race of the season.

Past that, it‘s all up in the air.

“Honestly, I really don‘t know,” he said. “We need to sit down and figure out what we need to do […] we‘re going to sit back, look at the season and see what we can run. I want to go run some more K&N races for sure. Whether it‘s one or two races. That can definitely help me go to race tracks at the venues the upper divisions go to. It is what it is.”

The Memphis 150 presented by AutoZone will take place at Memphis International Raceway on June 1.