October 6, 2003

Square D Racing Recap: John Boy and Billy 250

The John Boy and Billy 250 at Big Daddy’s South Boston Speedway had a spectacular ending as the crowd jumped to their feet in the final laps for the green-white-checkered finish. Square D driver Bobby Hamilton earned the eighth position as he bumped fenders with David Starr coming off the final turn of the short track.

In the first 20 laps of the race, Hamilton dropped eight spots from his starting position of seventh. His truck was extremely loose and Hamilton radioed to his team, “It seems like at the start of every race we are loose. We play catch up for the first part of the race trying to keep the truck off of the wall. Then tires are all worn out by the time I get back to my starting spot and I’m not even to the leaders yet. This needs to be fixed.”

By lap 75 Hamilton’s loose condition had settled in a little. Hamilton said the tires were not as slick and his truck was turning easier. On lap 106 the Tennessee native was passing Tom Pistone in the 31 truck when Pistone got loose and brought out the fourth caution.

This gave Hamilton a chance to pit and allowed him to have enough gas to make it the remainder of the race. On lap 110 Hamilton stopped on pit road in the sixth position. The Square D Racing Team changed four tires, added fuel and made an adjustment to the track bar. Several trucks in front of Hamilton opted not to pit, so he restarted the race in 12th position.

The fifth caution came out with only six laps left in the race when Brendan Gaughan spun after tangling with David Starr. Hamilton was in ninth position out of the 10 trucks left on the lead lap. Hamilton pitted for two tires trying to gain an advantage on the restart.

The green-white-checkered finish rule went into effect and the race restarted on lap 251. The crowd jumped to their feet and watched as Starr pushed Hamilton toward the wall blocking for position and Hamilton held his own on the race track crossing the start/finish line in the eighth spot.

“Brendan said I was his favorite driver at the end of the race. I told him that I should be this week because I saw Starr cut him off earlier in the race. And when he cut me off at the end, he spun around. So Brendan that was for you,” Hamilton said jokingly. “But it was really an accident. Anyhow the Square D Dodge was really good on long runs, but toward the end of the runs it would start losing forward bite. Everyone did that though. By the time we started running faster, it would be too late. It was like driving with eggshells under the truck.”

Dennis Setzer won the John Boy and Billy 250. Travis Kvapil, Ted Musgrave, Jon Wood and Rick Crawford followed in the top five.

NEXT EVENT: Silverado 350K at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas on October 11, 2003. The event will be televised live on SPEED Channel at 3:00 PM Eastern Time and also live on MRN radio at 3:00 PM Eastern Time.