Motor Sports Update
Late Race Accident Cost Almirola Good Finish at Bristol
Bristol, TN (March 24, 2007) — Rockwell Automation Racing returned to the track this weekend at the exciting half-mile Bristol Motor Speedway with a new face behind the wheel. Aric Almirola, a graduate of the Reggie White/JGR diversity effort was set to make his first start in the #20 Rockwell Automation Chevrolet. Almirola was a familiar face to the #20 crew as he spent a good portion of last season assisting the team with car setups when Denny Hamlin’s Cup schedule had him at other tracks.
Friday proved to be a trying day. Throughout the two practice sessions, Almirola wrestled with the car fighting to get every tenth of a second of speed out of it. After a lot of work from the #20 crew, Almirola finally got the car into the top-ten on the speed chart. With a couple minor tweaks, the car was ready for qualifying. Almirola posted a lap of 123.706 mph, which was good enough for the 15th starting spot. With a field full of Nextel Cup veterans, Almirola was confident in his machine.
"I think we have pretty good car," commented Almirola after qualifying. "The sun coming out hurt us a little bit, making us just a little too loose. We will need to concentrate on missing the first couple of wrecks and surviving to the second half of the race."
As the field took the green flag to start the Sharpie Mini 300, racing was furious. Almirola settled into the 14th position just focused on knocking off laps while remaining on the bottom of the race track. The plan was working until he slipped up the track a little on lap 43, dropping several positions in the process. Reporting that the car was tight in the center, Crew Chief Dave Rogers chose to protect track position and remain on the track until the leaders pitted.
After a restart from a caution on lap 65, the field remained bunched up for several laps. As the field began to pass an injured car that was several laps down, the long line cars began to pass him on the top side of the track. As Almirola was setting up his pass, the car moved up a lane blocking the #20 car and allowing the long snaking line of cars to duck underneath Almirola. By the time he was able to move back to the bottom groove, he was in the 28th position and the last car on the lead lap. Leader Carl Edwards continued to set a fast pace and soon put Almirola one lap down. When the caution flew on lap 111, Almirola headed to pit road for some much need adjustments.
Almirola spent the next 100 laps dodging cautions and trying to get his car loosened up especially in the center of the corner. During the caution on lap 182, the #20 team decided to roll the dice and remain on the track to try to gain some track position and moved to the tail end of the lead lap just behind the pace car. However, in a pit road error by NASCAR, they (NASCAR) chose to fix the error by putting all the cars back into their pre-pit stop positions regardless if they made pit stops. This allowed cars with fresh tires to go ahead of the #20 car. However, Almirola was still able to drive to the front of the lap down cars and in the position to receive the free pass from NASCAR during the next caution period. However, on lap 258, the #77 car of Bobby Labonte made contact with the #20 car sending Almirola into the wall. The car was damage beyond repair and Almirola finished in the 32nd position.
"Unfortunately, we needed a caution and it turned out to be us," said Almirola after the race. "It really is a shame. We were in the position to the get the ‘Lucky Dog’ and the 77 car just ran us over. There were only 14 cars on the lead lap, so if we returned to the lead lap, we were going to get fresh tires and easily would have finished in the top ten. I just want to thank the guys for their hard work this weekend. We were not the best off the truck, but kept working on it and were running really good laps times when the accident happened."
The Busch Series will have next weekend off and then travel to Nashville, TN. The Pepsi 300 is scheduled to start at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 6th and will be broadcast on ESPN2.
