David Elliott finishes second to Kyle Busch

Okay…so it was only a heat race, but how often do you get chance to use a headline like that?

 

But let’s start at the beginning…

 

More than 33 teams braved the oppressive heat and humidity at Delaware Speedway on July 7^th to compete in the Summer Showdown against NASCAR stars Kyle Busch, David Reutimann and Jason Leffler.

    

The motor issue which had been hurting the #37 team’s performance for the past two weeks continued during the 30-minute practice session. Even after changing the coil and carburetor, the motor continued to sputter and miss.

While David attended the drivers meeting, the crew found a loose wire in the ignition system which was causing the engine to stall. They replaced the wire and crossed their fingers that their motor issues were solved.

  

 

Whether the team had found the problem was answered when David turn his second qualifying lap in18.816 seconds – his fastest time ever at Delaware . The time qualifies the Pennzoil Impala in the 7^th position.

   

   

When the heat lineups were posted, David learned that he would be starting on the outside of the front row beside Kyle Busch. David knew that Busch’s #51 was at least 2/10ths of a second faster, but he still managed to run side-by-side with the NASCAR star for the first couple of laps and held off the #77 of Dion Verhoeven for second at the finish.

   

                            

David’s outstanding qualifying efforts enabled him to line up in the 5^th spot for the start of the feature.

Just before the 50-lap feature race, the team decided to change the gearing in the car so David wouldn’t be hitting the rev-limiter mid-way down the straightaway. It was a decision the team ended up regretting.

While the #37 could run better down the straight, it didn’t have the pull coming off the corners that it had earlier in the evening. Still, David raced in the top-10 and managed to avoid the numerous wrecks.

 

When Kyle Busch took the lead and controlled the re-starts, his slow pace, coupled with David’s taller gear caused the #37 to bog down coming to the green flags. This led to David dropping at least two spots on each restart. Still, David managed to bring the car home in 9^th place.

It was a bitter-sweet night for the David Elliott Racing Team. Although they finally got the car to run competitively, they also announced that they will only be running a limited schedule for the rest of the 2010 season.

“We knew about a month ago that we couldn’t afford to run a full schedule for the rest of the year, so we will be running two more races at Delaware before competing in the Great Canadian Race weekend as well as the August 1^st late model invitational race at Sauble Speedway,” said David.

All-in-all, the team was very pleased with the evening’s outcome and look forward to returning to Delaware on July 23^rd. See you there!