Handling issues hit Dodge NASCAR teams at Texas

Posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 AM EST.

The mile-and-half tracks on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit have been called “handling tracks” since the introduction of the car of tomorrow (COT) last year. Sunday’s event at Texas Motor Speedway proved the point.

Only 12 teams were able to get their cars to rotate or turn in the corners successfully throughout the race and carry momentum/speed down the straightaways. Those 12 cars finished on the lead lap in the Dickies 500. For the rest of the field, it was a three-and-a-half hour challenge.

Juan Pablo Montoya was an exception. He ran in the top 10 most of the race in the No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger before becoming a victim in a crash late in the race. It’s the second consecutive week Montoya’s has seen a top-10 finish erased in a mishap ignited by another driver. This time, Montoya’s day ended when he was hit from behind by David Gilliland. NASCAR officials ordered Gilliland to park the No. 38 for rough driving.

“I was running high the lap before and he went inside of me,” said Montoya. “He ran straight to the wall and I tried to get away. He put me into the wall. So I went into Turn 1 and I punted him just a little bit to say, hey, you’re running like 50 laps behind. I hit his bumper a little bit. If I had wanted to wreck him, I would have wrecked him. He came back and just wrecked me. It was intentional. It’s very disappointing. We’ve got great cars at Ganassi now. It’s just frustrating to have that happen.

“Our Texaco/Havoline Dodge was great all day. It’s a shame. We had another top-10 racecar today and weren’t able to finish the race. Our car was good in the heat of the day and was getting better as the sun went down. It is disappointing because the last few races, we’ve had new cars and ran really strong. I don’t know what the 38 was thinking.”

Sam Hornish Jr. had the best finish among the Dodge teams. Hornish was 23rd in the No. 77 Penske Truck Rental Dodge Charger. Kasey Kahne was 24th and A.J. Allmendinger was 26th

“Yeah, we’re right where we were at Charlotte and Atlanta,” Hornish Jr. said. “I think we were 22nd at one (Lowe’s) and 24th at the other (Atlanta). We just can’t get it up where we need to be. When we getup there in the clean air, we can run well, but we just can’t get there. We’re real happy with the guys that worked on the Penske Truck Rental Dodge. They gave me a decent car. We were just off on it too much early to be able to be where we needed to be.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 AM EST and is filed under Company, Motorsports. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.