CONCORD, N.C. (Oct. 15, 2011) — Regan Smith knew he had a better car than his 25th-place finish in Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 Sprint Cup race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
But fighting track position at the 1.5-mile oval along with an untimely caution and a slightly damaged car stymied his performance in the 334-lap, 501-mile race.
“It was one of those nights, nothing worked in our favor,” said Smith. “We fought track position all night and couldn’t get out of the dirty air. Our Furniture Row Chevrolet had some zip, and on a couple of occasions when we got up in some clean air we were fast.”
Starting 21st, Smith experienced handling issues with his No. 78 Chevrolet early in the race. But with good driver input coupled with the right car adjustments, Smith was able to pick up the pace.
“We were getting better, but then there was that caution (on Lap 288) shortly after we made a green-flag pit stop,” explained Smith. “That put us further behind and to make matters worse, a few laps later our car suffered some front-end damage in a multicar accident in turn two. We just had too many hurdles to overcome.”
Smith and the Denver, Colo.-based Furniture Row Racing team will be looking for a better result at the next Sprint Cup race — Sunday (Oct. 23) at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.
The Charlotte race winner was Matt Kenseth. Rounding out the top-five in order were: Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne and Marcos Ambrose.
