[media-credit name=”Tom Pennington/Getty Images” align=”alignright” width=”300″]
[/media-credit]“We won Rookie of the Year in 2010 and we were at the banquet, and we said that we wanted to be there in 2011, and we were able to accomplish that. To sit up there last year, and we told each other that we wanted six to ten wins and another championship, we got that, just a lot of hard work by a lot of great people, and I’m just blessed to be a part of it.”
For the sixth time in series history, the NASCAR Nationwide Series has a back-to-back champion as Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was able to secure his second championship in a row on Saturday night.
The final laps saw some anxious moment as Stenhouse was racing Austin Dillon, Brian Scott and Elliott Sadler for position. With fears of possibly wrecking and losing the championship, spotter Mike Calinoff got on the radio and told Stenhouse to let them go.
“There were some anxious moments for our spotter, and I got tired of listening, so I keyed up the mic so he couldn’t talk to me the rest of the way,” Stenhouse said. “He wanted me to let him got, and of course I wanted 20 top 5s at least, so I came up one spot short. We wanted to win the race; that’s what we come to do each and every week and that’s what got us in the position that we were in.”
The possibility of hitting the wall and losing it all didn’t occur to Stenhouse as he says he doesn’t think about that, racing 100% every lap.
“I ran the bottom when I needed to, I ran the very top when I needed to, and I ran the middle,” he said. “I just — I don’t know. Luckily I’m not having to tell you how it would have felt.”
The night didn’t go as Stenhouse would’ve hoped with the handling being off throughout the night. He would finish the Ford Ecoboost 300 in the sixth position. However, Stenhouse did what he likes to do all night – race hard.
“I like racing hard like that,” he said. “That’s what I do, that’s what I enjoy, and that’s why I love racing. That’s just how I drive.”
With coming up short, Stenhouse was disappointed and that was evident during the championship celebration.
“Well, we lost the race,” he said. “I like winning races. I didn’t come to Homestead, my favorite racetrack, to run sixth.”
