DAYTONA BEACH, FL (July 5, 2015) – J.J. Yeley and his JGL Racing team had extremely high hopes as they returned to the high banks of Daytona International Speedway with their No. 28 Toyota. Unfortunately the veteran racer suffered through a rough night on his way to a disappointing 20th-place finish in the running of the Subway Firecracker 250 at the “World Center of Speed”.
“That was a really tough night,” said Yeley. “Our speedway program has been really strong this year and that gave us all high hopes as we returned to Daytona. Unfortunately we struggled with our No. 28 Toyota tonight as well as with some of the traffic out there. We battled losing the lead draft, going down a lap, a pit road penalty and just about everything else. The only thing that went decent for us was avoiding the late race melee for the most part.”
Yeley would start the 100-lap event from the 28th position as a result of the newly modified qualifying format earlier in the day. A scheduled competition caution early in the race allowed the JGL Racing team to come down pit road and service the No. 28 Toyota. However, once back to green flag racing Yeley battled his car and traffic as he fell back through the field, eventually losing the lead draft.
With green flag stops required by the field just past the halfway point of the race, Yeley and his JGL Racing pit crew would be penalized for servicing the car outside the pit box on their stop.
After serving the stop-and-go penalty under green flag conditions, Yeley would find himself two laps down to the field. The last 30 laps of the event saw driver and team battle to avoid the “Big One” and a few other on track incidents to survive and come home with their eighth top-20 finish of the season.
“It just wasn’t our day out there today,” added Yeley. “It is a tough one to swallow but happens to everyone at some point. All of us on this JGL Racing team just need to pick ourselves up and prepare to head to Kentucky next week.”
With the 20th-place finish Yeley fell to 15th in the overall NASCAR XFINITY Series drivers’ standings – 93 points out of the Top-10.
Yeley and his JGL Racing team next head to Kentucky Speedway for a Friday night race under the lights. The running of the Kentucky 300 will be Friday July 10th and can be seen LIVE on NBC Sports Network at 7:30 pm ET. It can also be heard on Performance Racing Network (PRN) and Sirius Channel 90.
