Posted by Maskat
on September 7, 2008, 8:17 pm
74.44.72.61
Fresh off consecutive top-ten finishes at Nashville and Bristol, Ted entered this weekend looking for three consecutive top-tens for the No. 59 Team ASE/Harris Trucking Toyota team for the first time since he turned the trick at Martinsville, Atlanta, and Texas last fall.
After a long afternoon on Saturday, TED crossed the finish line with a hard-earned tenth.
“It was tight all day long,” TED said. “With the new restrictions on the engine you needed to be as loose as you could be to help keep the momentum up and we struggled to get it loosened up. We were never really fast enough to race our way out of the back of the pack but we made some good calls and ended up with another top ten. Danny (Rollins) and the rest of the guys did a good job on pit road and we stayed out of most of the trouble.”
A strategic call to take fuel only on the first pit stop gained TED a lot of track position early on, but not taking tires came back to hurt his progress in the end.
“We needed track position so we only took fuel,” TED said. “But not having new tires wasn’t going to let us race with those guys up at the front. But it did what we needed it to do, it got us up towards the front and let us develop our strategy from there.”
While TED was pleased with the team’s progress, there is still improvement to be made.
“You’re always happy when you can get up and finish in the top ten,” TED said. “So three top-tens in a row is really good, especially from where we were as a team a couple of months ago. But unless you’re looking at three straight wins, you can always look for some improvement. This does give the team a lot of good momentum for the rest of the year and hopefully we can keep racking up good finishes.”
TED being the 2005 series champion, is one of the most respected veterans in the garage area. That led to several rookies asking the 2001 and 2005 Gateway winner for advice throughout the weekend.
“I run a line that is a little bit different than what everyone else runs here,” TED said. “I actually had several of the rookie drivers come over and want to talk to me and learn from me on how to get around here. I am happy to help them but I am not sharing that with them, that’s for sure. You want the other guys to go out and have a good day because they could be racing near you and get over their head and get in trouble otherwise. I’ll give them the basics and it’s up to them to figure out the rest.”
TED is sixth top ten finish of the 2008 season moves him up one position to 13th in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship points race.
As always,
Maskat
Pest to the best.
Still TED after all these years.
UniTED in '09105
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