J.J. Yeley Races Backup Car to Top 10 Finish at Dover

Event: Stonebridge 200
Date: June 3, 2006
Start: 5th
Finish: 9th
Laps completed/Total: 200 / 200

Race Review

Dover, DE (June 4, 2006) – After crashing their primary car during practice on Friday, J.J. Yeley and his Vigoro / Home Depot teammates had their work cut out for them at Dover. The team was able to get their backup car on the track with just four minutes remaining in practice prior to qualifying, and the team put a basic setup underneath the car and hoped for the best. “I put us behind the eight ball a little bit,” said Yeley. “I got loose and thought I had the car saved, but it just kissed the wall off of Turn 2. We only got a few laps on our backup, and we took an educated guess on the setup.”

The team was given a break when qualifying was rained out on Saturday, and the team was awarded the fifth starting position based on their standing in the 2006 owner’s points. Once the race got underway, Yeley fell back to seventh in the early going. Once the field took a caution flag on Lap 31, the Vigoro / Home Depot team changed all four tires and made a wedge adjustment. Yeley left the pits in sixth.

The handling on his car improved from the initial restart, but it faded away during the long green-flag run. Yeley fell back to 11th until another caution on Lap 122 gave the team one more opportunity to pit and make some adjustments to their Vigoro / Home Depot Chevrolet. They changed all four tires with an air pressure adjustment, and they made a change to the car’s trackbar. Yeley left pit lane and entered the track in ninth with 20 cars on the lead lap.

Yeley maintained his position and took the checkered flag in ninth. “That was a very good recovery by our team today,” explained Yeley. “We battled back and unloaded our backup car and came away with a top 10. It’s hard to be disappointed with that.”

Yeley’s result was his ninth top-10 finish in the season’s first 14 races. The team will now prepare for next week’s NASCAR Busch Series race at Nashville Superspeedway on Saturday, June 10. The race will be televised live on FX at 7:30 PM EST. The race will mark the first one of the year where Yeley will be racing his Nextel Cup Series car in a different city on the same weekend as Yeley will travel back and forth between Pocono (Cup race) and Nashville.