HAMILTON
RISES TO SEVENTH IN BUSCH SERIES POINT’S RACE
A little home
cooking for McDonald’s driver Bobby Hamilton left the
Tennessee native in seventh place in the NASCAR Busch Series
Point’s race. For the second time this 2007 season,
the Busch Series came to Bobby’s home track, The Nashville
Superspeedway for a 300 mile race. When the checkered flag
waved across the field, Hamilton had moved forward to seventh
in the point’s race with a 13th place finish.
Friday afternoon brought
two practice sessions and Hamilton proceeded to record some
of the fastest laps of the sessions. The McDonald’s
Ford was working well and the team believed they could contend
for a win on Saturday.
On Saturday, Hamilton
qualified his No. 35 Ford in the 8th position, just hours
before the race was scheduled to begin. When the action started,
Hamilton began to charge forward. A long green flag run allowed
Hamilton to move inside the top-five before the first pit
stop of the day.
Unfortunately, the team
had trouble changing the front tires and dropped to 15th following
the pit stop. For the remainder of the race, crew chief Chris
Wright was forced to make pit stop decision to regain the
lost positions. Wright tried two tire pit stops and was successful
in placing Hamilton back inside the top five. The older tires
eventually wore out and Hamilton dropped back to 13th at the
end of the race.
“We put ourselves
in a bad position on the first pit stop, and that kept us
from finishing where we should have,” Hamilton said.
The McDonald’s Ford was fast tonight, a top five car,
we just hurt ourselves. We will move forward and go to Kentucky
with an eye on winning next Saturday night.”
To no ones surprise,
Carl Edwards won the Busch Series race. The Cup Series driver
took the lead with over 50 laps to go and drove away to an
easy win over fellow Cup driver Clint Bowyer.
Next Saturday night,
Hamilton will return to Kentucky Speedway where he will go
for his second win at the 1.5 mile track. Check your local
listings for broadcast times in the area.
|
