Getting Soaked

July 10, 2007

Furniture Row Racing secured a 25th place finish at the Pepsi 400 last weekend at Daytona. Sporting a red, white, and blue patriotic 4th of July paint scheme, the team was glad to be back on track.

The team fought hard for the finish, weaving its way through the field and dogging multiple wrecks. Considering the #78 was placed at the back of the pack in the starting grid, there was an ample amount of weaving and dogging for driver Kenny Wallace to contend with.

Was the 43rd starting position due to a lackluster qualifying run? No, not at all. The team was optimistic about their impressive 4th fastest qualifying speed with 14 cars to go. Unfortunately, the #78 was about to get soaked, both on and off the track.

General Manager, Joe Garone explains the situation.

“The team was on its way to its first top 5 qualifying position, and with 14 cars left to qualify it rained. There were no cars left in the line up that were faster than the 78 in practice, so we felt confidant we were going to start 5th or better.

Mother nature had a different idea, and after raining for fifteen minutes NASCAR canceled qualifying. Ultimately, this would start us in 43rd position for the race due to owner’s points. With a true qualifying set up in the car, we had to do adjustments all race long to try to become competitive for the end of the race. Kenny did a great job of missing the wrecks and buying us time to get a race set up in the car. The best position we could get to was 25th.

We’re testing in Iowa this week before moving on to the Chicago race. The test in Iowa is to sort out a new car we would like to run at Chicago.”
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