Late-Race Incident Ends Matt Tifft’s Day at Iowa Speedway
“We were still missing the take-off speed we really needed at Iowa Speedway with our No. 2 American Ethanol e15 Chevrolet Camaro. Our long run speed was decent, which helped with the longer green flag runs we had during the race today. After losing a lap towards the end of the final stage, we fought hard to be in the lucky dog position in case a caution came out, which it did. We got our lap back and were sitting in the 11th spot, so even though we had to restart toward the back of the field I thought we may have a shot to get a top 10 out of the day in the closing laps of the race. Unfortunately, the 52 (David Starr) turned the 26 (Max Tullman) heading into Turn 1 on the restart, and I just had nowhere to go. I hate it for my team. We were better than the results show today.”
-Matt Tifft
Shane Lee Fights Handling Issues at Iowa Speedway
“The No. 3 Childress Vineyards Chevrolet started out pretty good at the beginning of the race today. We started eighth and got up to the top five. It did pretty good on the short run but after 10 or so laps we just couldn’t control the center quick enough to keep up with everybody. It really hurt us. We lost a lot of speed. That’s sort of how it went for the whole race. We tried to play a little bit of a strategy there at the end to see how long we could go on the tires, and hoping we would get a caution and having the freshest set of tires. It just didn’t work out but it was nice to be out front and leading. I’m really looking forward to the next race in the No. 3 car at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.”
– Shane Lee
Last-Lap Spin Results in 11th-Place Finish for Daniel Hemric and South Point Hotel & Casino Team at Iowa Speedway
“For how rough this weekend was, to line up in the first two or three rows on the last few restarts is a good thing here at Iowa Speedway. You know it’s always going to get wild and it did. We tried to improve from what we did during the first race here in June and never really got our South Point Hotel & Casino Chevrolet where it needed to be this weekend. Despite that, I thought we were going to be able to salvage a decent finish. I got into Turn 3 way too hard under the No. 19 (Brandon Jones) on the last lap. I wheel hopped it and cleaned him out as well as myself. I hate it for those guys, because that took away a good finish for both of us. He and I both know good finishes aren’t what we need, we’ve got to win and that’s what we were trying to do and it didn’t work out. We were able to overcome a speeding penalty early in the day, but if we had gotten the car handling better we probably could have made up even more ground. It shows a lot of perseverance from this team to do what we did today.”
-Daniel Hemric