Grala Turns Heads in First Race with Fury Race Cars

By Seth Eggert, Staff Writer

CONCORD, N.C. – Just a week prior to the Alsco 300, Kaz Grala was without a ride after JGL Racing shuttered his No. 24 team. Grala drove the race of his life at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the brand-new Fury Race Cars teams. This was the team’s first of four scheduled NASCAR Xfinity Series races.

Throughout the entire race, Grala ran towards the front in the No. 61 NETTTS Ford Mustang. In the final 30 laps, he bounced in and out of the top-10. In the waning laps of the race, he surged forward, battling for a top-five briefly. Back-to-back cautions late in the race dropped him to 10^thby the time the checkered flag waved.

“That was a lot of fun right there,” Grala said with a smile from ear to ear. “Huge shout out to everyone at Fury Race Cars, Ford Performance, Roush-Yates Engines. I don’t know how this is possible, but it was, and this is fantastic. Great debut for us. I can’t say enough about how hard everyone has worked. I don’t think anyone’s slept in the last week and a half. I hope they’re excited now ‘cause I hope this will make their hard work pay off. I’m looking forward to the next three races. We’re going to have a blast.”

The 10^th-place finish was Grala’s second top-10 in his career, and first since his Xfinity Series debut at Daytona earlier this year. The top-10 also moves him up to 16^thin the Championship Standings, 250-points behind Points Leader Elliott Sadler, and 38-points behind the cutoff for the Playoffs, held by Michael Annett.

However, Grala currently has just three more races unless more funding can be attained for him and the team co-owned by his father, Darius Grala and former crew chief, Tony Eury, Jr. 14 days prior to his top-10 finish, Fury Race Cars did not exist as a race team in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

“Unbelievable,” Grala said in disbelief. “I don’t know what to say about it. This car was great from when we unloaded, and we only got it better. Our balance at the end of the race was perfect. I mean, I had Kyle Busch out of my windshield, that’s always fun. There’s a lot to be excited about from that race. I know that I am, and I think I speak for everybody when we say that this was a wildly successful debut for us.”

Now Grala and his team will hope to parlay this impressive day, and top-10 finish into more opportunities later in the year.