Chad McCumbee, No. 07 GPSstore.com Silverado, finished third in the San Bernardino 200 for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, his career-best at Auto Club Speedway.
Starting 12th, McCumbee steadily moved his way up through the field during the 100-lap/200-mile race.
Three-time NCWTS champion Ron Hornaday, No. 33 Camping World Silverado, finished sixth in today’s race and sits fifth in the standings with two of the 25 2009 races in the record books.
Matt Crafton, No. 88 Quaker State/Menards Silverado finished seventh despite an unscheduled pit stop early in the race under green for over-heating problems. Crafton now sits third in the NCWTS standings.
Rookie Ricky Carmichael, No. 4 Monster Energy Drink Silverado, finished eighth to give Silverado four of the top-10 finishers.
The next race on the schedule will be the March 7 running of the American Commercial Lines 200 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
QUOTES:
MCCUMBEE - ON THE RACE: Well, I wasn’t even sure what I was going to be doing mid-January. I talked to Bobby Dotter over at Greenlight Racing and they wanted me to come on board and right now it’s just a part time team. They did a great job today. They’ve worked really, really hard to improve their program over the winter and it’s already shown dividends this early in the season. Bobby Dotter really helped us out making that pit call. It was obviously a little bit of a handful to start with but I think those five or seven laps we really got going there on that last restart and helped us propel up into the top five. They made great adjustments on the truck. The thing was really good. They kept calling out the times to me and we were steadily right where we needed to be. I was real proud of them and hopefully this is something we can really build on.
“I wasn’t real sure it was going to work out. It was obviously a handful there for a while. I knew once we settled down we could kind of maintain. I was worried that there wasn’t enough on the new tires, but there was. It really took off really great for about five or seven laps and then it kind of seemed like everything leveled out. But I think we made our truck better. Our truck was just continuously coming on there at the end. So my hats off to these guys. This is our first race where all the work these guys have done during the off season has really made a difference.”
AFTER HAVING A ROLLER COASTER OFF SEASON AND LANDING HERE, TALK ABOUT HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS TO YOU
“Oh, it’s pretty big, you know. Unfortunately over the off-season, everybody was struggling to get things done. I can’t thank Bobby Dotter and everybody enough for this opportunity. We had talked about it a little bit before the ’08 season ended and we were able to put it together in January and it’s paying off right now.”
“It was tough there for a while. I was trying to run wide-open in the first corner, and that didn’t work out for me. Bobby Dotter’s the man on top of this pit box. He really made it happen for us today. We made the truck a lot better and we were really very, very good at the end even though we had a few laps fresher tires. It was just an awesome effort for these guys. They have worked really hard over the off-season to get to this point. And we weren’t even planning to come here. I can’t think everybody enough for coming on board and helping us out. We have so many great supporters and so many people who want to see this deal happen and want us to run more. Right now it’s a part time deal. But if we keep doing this, hopefully that’ll change.”
HORNADAY - HOW DID YOU RUN TODAY? “I don’t think the fans got their money out of that race. It was a pretty boring race for the fans and I am ashamed to say I was a part of that race there. We had to put fuel only in twice, just because you don’t have enough tires and somebody is going to get hurt. I hate to say that but we’ll take a top-ten out of it and go on. We just have to figure out how to strategize because you don’t know if the race is going to go yellow and you hear they are talking about debris, then not talking about debris, then they are talking about oil, then they are not talking about oil. So do you put fuel in or to you put tires on? You just don’t know.
“Its tough. Its the second race and we’ll just have to sit down with NASCAR and see what we can do to make this think a little better.”
CRAFTON - YOU HAD A GOOD TRUCK TODAY. “I had a very good truck and it fired off and it was pretty good right off. I would have loved to have the changes we had right here at the end that we did to it, and never had to put tires on and have to come from the back. I was just dying for a yellow because I knew we were a top-three truck. I would have liked to know what it would have been if we could have just worked our way back up with track position. The guys did an awesome job in the pits all day, but can’t help it.”
YOU ARE OFF TO A PRETTY GOOD START THIS SEASON. TWO REALLY GOOD RUNS. “Yeah we’ve had some good runs and sometimes you just can’t buy luck. If there was a day to be better lucky than good, today was it.”
CARMICHAEL – “I am very happy, very happy with the way it ended. I learned so much, so much today just racing up front with those guys. I am really happy with the way it turned out looking back. I spun the tires on the first start. Other guys had some momentum and went on by me. Kinda caught back up, I think I was running maybe sixth or something. Got behind my teammate, Ron Hornaday. I was just following him really, didn’t get aggressive enough and make the move on him. I thought something had gone wrong with my right front, so we pulled in and that put us off sequence. We lost a lot of track position so that was totally my fault. There ended up not being anything wrong. We came back out 19th and had to fight back and ended up eighth.”
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