Ryan Truex (eighth) was the highest finishing Toyota driver in Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series (NNS) race at Delaware’s Dover International Speedway.
Truex’s eighth-place result was his fourth top-15 finish in as many races driving for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Camry drivers Brian Scott (11th), Michael Annett (12th), Joey Logano (13th), Kenny Wallace (16th), Steve Wallace (20th) and Joe Nemechek (30th) were also in the field at the one-mile concrete oval.
Five Camry drivers are currently in the top-15 in the unofficial NNS point standings following 29 of 34 races in the 2011 season — K. Wallace (seventh), S. Wallace (eighth), Scott (ninth), Annett (10th), and Nemechek (14th).
RYAN TRUEX, No. 20 Heinz Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Finishing Position: 8th How was your race today? “Well, we had a great day. Qualified fifth. Ran top-five the whole day. Had a really good pit stop and got up to third and we ran behind the 60 (Carl Edwards) and the 33 (Clint Bower) for a while there. They were really fast. I was just trying to keep up with them. We were able to run with them for a little while, but they had really good cars. We ran third for a while, pitted under green and the caution came out and kind of got us off sequence there. Got the wave around and got stuck behind a few lap cars, so I think we deserve to be at least top-five. We had a good enough car. Everyone worked really hard to give me a good car this weekend. It’s great when you can go out there and have good cars and run like that, but it’s kind of disappointing when you don’t finish where you know you should have.”
Did you leave anything on the table today? “I didn’t leave anything on the table. I drove that thing as hard as I could when I was following Clint (Bowyer) and Carl (Edwards) up there. I couldn’t catch him. Yeah, bad luck, like he said. Can’t do nothing about that. Two months ago if I was sitting up here in eighth I would have been ecstatic and now I’m disappointed about that, so I’ve got to be grateful for where I’m at and the opportunities I’ve got.”
BRIAN SCOTT, No. 11 Shore Lodge Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Finishing Position: 11th How was your race? “We had a really fast No. 11 Shore Lodge Toyota. We needed a couple pit stops to make it better and the guys did exactly that — we got it better. We fought never having track position all day, but a couple long green flag runs and some killer pit stops by our guys put us up there in the mix. I think we got in the sixth, seventh range like that coming to green flag stops. I just came in a little hot and couldn’t get it slowed down without locking the front brakes up. We hit a water barrel and went a lap down because of that, got the wave around and then we just fought track position. We were fast but we had to deal with cars that were two laps down, cars that we hadn’t raced all day that were a lap down that had then caught back up with us because of our incident. It’s unfortunate that what should have been a top-10 day easily, possibly a top-five day, now we finished 11th.”
MICHAEL ANNETT, No. 62 Pilot Travel Centers Toyota Camry, Rusty Wallace Racing Finishing Position: 12th
JOEY LOGANO, No. 18 SportClips Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing Finishing Position: 13th
KENNY WALLACE, No. 09 Federated Auto Parts Toyota Camry, RAB Racing with Brack Maggard Finishing Position: 16th
STEVE WALLACE, No. 66 5-Hour Energy Toyota Camry, Rusty Wallace Racing Finishing Position: 20th
JOE NEMECHEK, No. 87 NEMCO Toyota Camry, NEMCO Motorsports Finishing Position: 30th
