Audio feature: This Week In Dodge Racing

Posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 4:21 PM EDT.

Ryan Newman ran 450 of 500 laps at Bristol Motor Speedway in the top 10 en route to a sixth-place finish in the Sharpie 500. Newman worked his way as high as second in a race which had only three different leaders and four lead changes.  Newman was able to steer clear of a couple of major multi-car incidents.  Four other Dodge drivers weren’t as fortunate, as Kasey Kahne, Robby Gordon, Sam Hornish Jr. and Reed Sorenson were involved in a seven-car mishap on lap 216.  The mishap prompted the red flag to permit the safety crew to clear the wreckage.

 

Sorenson, Gordon and Hornish Jr. returned to the track after extensive repairs looking to score as many points as possible.  Kahne’s No. 9 Budweiser Dodge team, with the help of the No. 19 crew, tried to rebuild the front end of the racecar, but ran out of time before the task was completed.

 

It was the second consecutive race Kahne has failed to finish.  He was seventh in the point standings after Pocono, but has lost seven spots in the last three races and is now 14th.  Only two races remain to determine the 12 drivers earning berths in the Chase for the Championship over the final 10 races.

 

Kurt Busch was the only other Dodge driver besides Newman to finish all 500 laps; he finished 15^th.  Kurt says there have been many obstacles in the 2008 season, and good drivers make their own luck.

 

Kurt Busch—“It’s been a long year of just trying to get Penske Racing back to form, we started off with a bang at Daytona, but we feel like we’ve got all the right people, I love Pat Tryson and all the crew guys right underneath him, I like all the guys back at the shop, we just can’t quite put our finger on what we need, and I learned early on even before I made it up to the Cup level, that luck is definitely a player in racing. And I think Richard Childress defined luck the best, he says when preparation meets opportunity, that’s luck. It’s something that’s always been in the game, you’ve gotta have strategy, you’ve gotta have a fast car, and where we are in points, we’ve got our backs up against the wall.”

 

Next up for the Sprint Cup Series is the Pepsi 500 at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California.

 

In the Craftsman Truck Series O’Reilly 200 presented by Valvoline on Wednesday night, Dodge driver Dennis Setzer qualified and finished in the eighth position.  His Bobby Hamilton Racing teammate Stacey Compton finished 31st.

 

The Craftsman Truck Series resumes September 6^th with the Camping World 200 at Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Illinois.

 

Team Mopar® driver Joey Saldana returned to winning form August 19, scoring a convincing victory in the Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws (WoO) Sprint Series event at Montana’s Billings Motorsports Park. It was the third WoO victory of the season for the Indiana driver and his Kasey Kahne Racing team, and the 37th of Saldana’s career.

 

Team Mopar driver and current Formula Drift points leader Samuel Hübinette proved an effective ambassador for Mopar and the sport of drifting in the inaugural Formula Drift (FD) Mexico exhibition event. The fan favorite drew large autograph-seeking crowds, and then drove his Mopar NuFormz Racing Dodge Charger SRT8® drift car to a second-place finish Aug. 23 at the Monterrey Autodrome.

 

Team Mopar driver Brad Sweet was among the biggest sensations of the August 23-24 “Hall of Fame Classic,” a United States Auto Club (USAC) doubleheader at the historic Angell Park Speedway in Sun Prairie, Wis. The California driver authored a stirring drive from the last spot to second place at the checkered flag in Saturday night’s opening 30-lap feature.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 4:21 PM EDT and is filed under Motorsports and tagged Audio. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.