Brandon Snider

The Mel Bush Motorsports team was preparing their screw-blown 2015 Corvette for a final-round race against number-one qualifier Brandon Snider when Snider’s crew chief informed them that the Q80 Racing Camaro would be unable to return for the final. D’Aprile staged, took the green light and idled to a 12-second elapsed time.

“As the saying goes, you really want to race for it, but with the day that we had I would take it any way we could get it. The truth is Brandon is a really close friend of mine and I know that we’re going to be able to race each other again. We’ve had some really good battles in the past.”

Always humble in victory or defeat, D’Aprile praised his team for their efforts in the hot conditions.

“I’m grateful for (team owners) Mel and Johanne Bush and the guys who work with us. We have Al Billes tuning for us now. We’ve won several races together and I think this is the start of something really good. We’re really gelling as a team right now and I’m really excited to see what’s going to happen.”