With the ASA Southern series finale being held at CCMP , AK Motorsports was feeling confident that they could capture the "Rookie of the Year" and maybe even pick up their first win of the season.
      During Friday practice, the team would make few adjustments since the car was fast right out of the trailer. Austin would turn some of the fastest laps of the night which would instill a confidence in the team for the following day.
      Around 9:00 am, Ronnie Enfinger was found unconscious in his bed in the rear section of the trailer. The ambulance was called and Ronnie was transported to the nearest hospital where it was realized that he gotten carbon monoxide poisoning. This put a dampening on the team's morale and everyone hoped that Ronnie would be ok.
      With minimal practice time on Saturday, the now smaller team got to work. After making a mach qualifying run, Austin would move up to 4th on the speed charts. The crew would adjust a few more things and then prepare the car for qualifying.

      Austin was one of the last cars to take time, so he knew what time he needed to beat. He drove his 2 laps as hard as he could, and wound up qualifying 5th quickest with a 15.125. Austin wasn’t happy with the way the car handled, but he knew that in order for the car to be good in the race, it needed to be a little bit ‘tight’ in the corners. Austin requested that “no adjustments be made for the race.”

      With the pole sitter pulling a 6 inversion, Austin would start the race 2nd. Within 3 laps, Austin had cleared the polesitter and was on his way to leading a career high 21 laps. Later on in the race, Austin ’s request to not make any adjustments would come back to bite him, as the car began to get too loose in the center of the corner. Austin would slowly loose positions until he fell into the 7th position where he would eventually finish. The person he needed to beat finished in the 8th position, giving Austin the “rookie of the year’ award. During post-race interviews, Austin said “I wasn’t necessarily happy with how we finished, but we did what we set out to do at the beginning of he season…win the rookie of the year and finish in the top 5 in points. You can’t be disappointed in that. I like to thank all of my crew and sponsors for helping me have this great year, and hopefully we can do even better next year.”

      To make things even better, Ronnie regained consciousness earlier that day and fully recovered by early Sunday, when he was released from the hospital.

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