Hornish and Team Look to Break String of Bad Luck at The Monster Mile
Sam Hornish Jr. and the No. 9 Ford team welcome SlimFast and Walmart back to the No. 9 Ford Fusion for this weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Dover (Del.) International Speedway. Hornish and the team are looking to break their streak of bad luck with a strong finish at the one-mile, concrete oval.
Hornish will make his ninth Sprint Cup Series start at the Monster Mile this weekend. He earned his best finish of 13th in the series at the one-mile track in the spring of 2013. In five XFINITY Series starts, Hornish has started the race from the second position twice and earned his best finish of seventh in the spring of 2013.
Veteran Crew Chief Kevin “Bono” Manion has 18 starts at Dover on top of the pit box. He tamed the Monster in the spring of 2007, when Martin Truex Jr. drove his team to Victory Lane. Manion has accumulated a total of three Top-10s at Dover.
“Dover is one of the tracks I enjoy going to, and I have had some good runs there, but it seems like something always happens to get in the way of a good finish. It has one of the highest sensations of speed from a driver’s standpoint, and it’s almost like a roller coaster getting down in the corners. With the concrete track and the banking, the car launches at the end of the straightaway and lightens up the back end of the car. Those are the things that make Dover such a fun track to go to.
“We’re happy to have SlimFast and Walmart with us again in Dover. They were on our car a few weeks ago in Chicago, we had a really good car, but had some bad luck and wasn’t able to get a good finish for them. This weekend will give us a chance to make up for it and get a strong finish.”
