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[/media-credit]Old pavement, new pavement, it doesn’t matter to Bobby Gerhart as he still continued his Daytona dominance with his seventh Daytona win.
“We didn’t have a good car – we had a great car,” Gerhart said. “That was awesome…..The kid (Chris Buescher) did a tremendous job. I was getting pounched around a lot there.”
Playing the role of Gerhart’s wing man and pushing him to victory was 18-year old rookie Chris Buescher, who stuck with Gerhart the whole race.
“That was pretty cool with coming to Daytona for the first time,” he said. “Congratulations to Bobby Gerhart – he is the best here. He learned a lot here.”
Bobby Gerhart and Chris Buescher pitted early in the race under the first caution and then stayed out under the cautions that followed to take the top two spots with 30 laps to go.
“We’re getting exceptional milage again,” Gerhart’s crew chief Billy Gerhart said. “We went to Talladega three weeks ago and we knew when we came here, it’d be tough to pass. So lets work on the mileage…….We come here to win. I’d rather be leading and run out rather than run second.”
Rookie Matt Merrell finished third while Camping World Truck Series veteran Ricky Carmichael finished fourth. NASCAR All-Star Showdown winner Jason Bowles completed the top five in fifth.
Rounding out the top 10 was Joey Licata, Benny Gordon, Chad McCumbee, Grant Enfinger and Frank Kimmel.
Pole sitter Ty Dillon finished 11th after being involved in an accident earlier in the race.
On lap 63, the big one happened when Hal Martin blew a tire, causing a wreck that involved Steve Arpin, Milka Duno, Kyle Fowler, Steve Blackburn, Bryan Silas and Maryeve Dufault.
“The only thing I saw was smoke and I saw bouncing cars all over the place,” Maryeve said afterwards. “I thought the safest place would be to go down as low as possible, but we still got caught up.”
Other wrecks that happened included Ed Pompa with a tire blowing out on lap 56 and Chad Hackenbracht flipping on lap 45.
“I’m doing pretty fine. going through three and four, all i know is we had a good three-four car draft going,” Hackenbracht said. “I heard something clinking, went to the outside of the 30 car and it wrecked.”
The next ARCA race of the season will be on April 15th at Talladega Superspeedway and will be broadcast live on SPEED.
To see more articles by Ashley McCubbin and live updates from the weekend, check out http://newsfromthepits.blogspot.com/
