INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (July 26, 2009) - With just a handful of races left before the Chase for the Championship starts, consistency and quality top-10 finishes are the goal each week. In the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard on Sunday, David Reutimann was able to achieve that objective by scoring an 8th-place finish, moving up one place in the points to 13th.
In qualifying on Saturday, Reutimann drove the No. 00 Aaron’s Dream Machine to a 5th-place starting spot, but the car didn’t feel quite right to him. “When they told me what we ran, I had to ask them again to make sure that I heard them right. Starting near the front is so important here. Hats off to everybody at Michael Waltrip Racing and everybody over here that works on the old Aaron's Dream Machine - also to Toyota and Toyota Racing Development.”
Soon into the race on Sunday Reutimann radioed in that the No. 00 Aaron’s Dream Machine was a bit on the tight side. “We’re tight on exit. Sliding the nose pretty bad right now,” said Reutimann, meaning that the car was hard to turn coming out of the corners. Nevertheless, the Aaron’s Dream Machine was good enough for Reutimann to stay inside the top 10.
Over the course of the race the team would continue to work on freeing up the car, eventually making it too loose and having to undo some of the previous changes. But throughout the day Crew Chief Rodney Childers kept his driver calm, reminding Reutimann that he was running lap times that were as fast as anyone else on the track.
Finally, with about 50 laps to go, the Aaron’s Dream Machine settled into a comfortable place and Reutimann was able to move past a few cars before eventually having to hold off Jeff Gordon to bring home the Aaron’s Dream Machine 8th.
The top-10 finish was a remarkable accomplishment at a track where Reutimann’s previous best finish was 30th.
“We just kind of hovered around the top 10 most of the day,” said Reutimann. “The guys did a great job and had good pit stops. That’s about the car we had at the end of the race. We made it a little bit better, but track position is so important. The longer the run, the better we got. Those guys would get too far away from us on the short run and I just couldn’t get back to them. All in all it was a good day and a pretty productive day.”
A productive day, indeed. Sunday’s performance moves Reutimann up to 13th in the championship race, just 68 points out of the top-12 cutoff, heading into to Pocono next week where he finished 3rd last month.
Jimmie Johnson took home the checked flag, becoming the first back-to-back winner at the Brickyard by holding off a hard-charging Mark Martin at the end. Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle and Brian Vickers round out the top five. Juan Pablo Montoya, the dominant car for much of the day, finished 11th after getting caught speeding on pit road.
Next week the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series travels to the prestigious Pocono Raceway for the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500 on Sunday, August 2, 2009. ESPN will provide the television coverage, beginning at 1 p.m.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment