AND LEICHT GRABS A TOP 10
Ricky Rudd, driver of the No. 88 Fusion in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series had a season-best finish with his seventh place finish in Sunday’s race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
Stephen Leicht, driver of the No. 90 Fusion in the NASCAR Busch Series finished 10 th in Saturday’s race, his second-best finish so far this season.
Travis Kvapil finished seventh in Saturday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race in Mansfield, Ohio. DEARBORN, Mich., May 28 –The long holiday weekend had some Ford drivers celebrating some of their best finishes of the season. Ricky Rudd had a season-best finish in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series, Stephen Leicht had a second-best finish in the Busch Series and Travis Kvapil was the top F-150 in the Craftsman Truck Series race.
Rudd earned his best finish since joining Robert Yates Racing with his seventh-place finish in Sunday’s race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
“We knew we had a good car,” said Rudd. “We obviously didn’t have a winning car, but we knew we had a top 12, top 15 car. Even when we got here, we qualified seventh with it. It’s been quick all along.”
Rudd was able to overcome handling problems and having to conserve as much fuel as possible for the finish.
“We started off and were about right. We needed to free up more and we were just almost a stop behind every time on getting the car freed up enough, but our guys did a great job calling the shots on getting the car freed up. I was having to save gas so much the last couple of laps. We were lucky to finish. We were just glad we were able to finish.”
During Saturday’s NASCAR Busch Series race in Charlotte, Stephen Leicht, driver of the No. 90 Fusion finished 10 th, his second top 10 of the season.
“ I’m thrilled,” said Leicht. “I’m happy for this citifinancial team, they worked really hard. We tested here last week and we had a real good car, but I made a little contact with the wall there with about 10 minutes left in the last practice so we had to go home and fix the body. I’ve got to thank the whole body shop back at Yates, they worked their tails off.”
As a strategy move with about 45 laps to go, Leicht and his team decided not to pit in order to gain track position.
“At that point we couldn’t make it on fuel if it went green and we knew the guys pitting couldn’t either, so we took a chance. We were still running 11 th or 12 th when that happened and that put us up to about fourth, and then with the three cautions in a row it put us in the window that we could make it so it worked out in our favor.”
Also running on Saturday was the truck series in Mansfield, Ohio. Travis Kvapil was the top-finishing F-150 with his seventh-place finish.
“The race was all right,” said Kvapil. “We started off a little shaky. We only passed a couple of trucks all day long and went from 20 th to seventh and everybody just took care of themselves. I’m pretty happy with it. We’ve had fast trucks the past couple of races, but we haven’t been able to bring it home.”
All three of NASCAR’s premier series head to Dover for a tripleheader next weekend while the NHRA Funny Car teams head to Topeka, Kansas for the O’Reilly Summer Nationals.
