STEVE WALLACE SURVIVES FOR TOP-15 FINISH IN DAYTONA
DAYTONA BEACH, FL (July 2, 2010)—Although it wasn’t quite as pretty as he would have liked, Rusty Wallace Racing’s Steve Wallace (No. 66 5-Hour Energy Toyota Camry) made use of sheer determination Friday evening to score a top-15 finish in the Subway 250 at Daytona International Speedway.
His 15th-place effort in the debut of the Nationwide Series “Car of Tomorrow” allowed him to extend his streaks of consecutive top-15 finishes and consecutive lead lap finishes to five, the series’ third-longest active streaks in both respective categories.
Wallace started Friday’s qualifying session and race from a deficit, after a strange incident in Thursday’s first practice session saw lead ballast from a backmarker car come loose during practice. The loose ballast exploded through the front end of the No. 66 Camry, resulting in catastrophic damage to Wallace’s primary car and forcing him to a backup for qualifying and the race.
After starting his backup car from the 27th position, Wallace made quick work of the cars in the middle of the field, breaking into the top-15 prior to the race’s 30-lap mark. Over the course of the event, the young wheelman would remain among the top-15 for over two-thirds of the race’s 102 laps, en route to his fifth straight top-15 and lead lap finishes.
With his finish in Daytona, Wallace maintains the eighth position in the Nationwide Series driver standings. He now sits a mere 11 points from seventh place and less than 160 points from sixth.
Said Wallace, “We got ourselves in a hole when we hit the lead from that “start and park” car, but nonetheless, we didn’t give up. If nothing else, we brought one of our cars home in one piece and we have something to work on for Michigan.
“With that said though, we as a team have a lot more work to do on our COT cars before the next race for them. They just didn’t have the pure speed that we needed to run up front tonight. We were good enough to hang onto the back of the lead pack, but we really didn’t have much for them. Our 5-Hour Energy Camry was just really, really loose all night long.
“Even with that, we were looking good for a top-ten finish during that last restart. I had Kyle Busch pushing me like crazy, so I thought we were really going to go, but we got stuck behind the 88 car. He was just really slow for some reason; he hasn’t really raced in a long time, so I don’t know if he missed a shift or what. It just killed our momentum and our chance at a top-ten.”
Meanwhile, it was an even more frustrating race for Wallace’s teammate, Brendan Gaughan (No. 62 5-Hour Energy Toyota Camry). Gaughan entered Daytona on a streak of three-straight top-ten finishes and hoped to extend that streak this weekend.
After starting from the 19th position, Gaughan ran as high as sixth during the day, before developing an extreme loose condition during the mid-section of the race. Ultimately, Gaughan was taken out of the event by a last-lap hit from the No. 99 Toyota of Trevor Bayne. The contact resulted in Gaughan’s Toyota slamming head-on into the turn three wall on the last lap of the race.
Gaughan was credited with a lead-lap 29th-place finish on the evening. That finish resulted in Gaughan dropping two positions, to ninth, in the Nationwide Series driver standings. He now stands 27 points behind Wallace for eighth position and a mere 38 points from seventh overall.
Stated Gaughan, “Our South Point Camry was really, really loose all day long. These new cars were definitely harder to hold onto than the old style cars.
“Still, we were cruising along, looking like we’d be in the top-15 somewhere, when we got taken out on the last lap. The 99 car was crowding everyone really badly all day long; there were supposedly a lot of guys complaining about it. Unfortunately, we ended up being his victim there on the last lap.
“At least this weekend gave us a baseline as to where we are on some of our COT development and we learned about some areas where we can really improve. I know our team will be a lot better come the next COT race at Michigan.”
