Bobby Hamilton Racing

2002 Media Release
Kroger 225 July 14, 2002 Kentucky Speedway Contact: David Pepper 615-754-6868 dnpracing@aol.com	No 4 Brian Rose Stats
	No. 8 Bill Lester Stats
	No. 18 Robert Pressley Stats
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Man did we have a fast truck this weekend. It's just unfortunate that the finishing results didn't reflect that. I have really got to commend the guys at Bobby Hamilton Racing. After our Kansas experience of being the meat in a 3-wide sandwich 4 laps into that race and coming out of it with essentially a wrecked truck, the team put "Trix" back together again. I was glad they did because I really like this truck and we were able to reward the hard work back at the shop by once again qualifying Trix in 3rd position for the Kentucky race. This was our second top 3 qualifying effort in a row and the whole team was smiles because after such a disappointing outing last race, this result was just what we needed to pump us up again. I was determined to run a smart race. With Kentucky being race 11 of 22 this season, I'm considering this race to mark the beginning of the second half of our season. The first half was fraught with just about every conceivable crazy thing that could happen to us. >From strange wrecks to odd mechanical failures, you'd be hard-pressed to place direct blame upon us for any of it. So even if I had to back out early in this race to ensure a good finish, I was going to do it because I didn't want a damaged truck and wanted to score maximum points towards the championship. At the start of the race I quickly settled in to a comfortable pace. We were running in 4th and it was relatively easy to do so because the truck was so good. I was actually closing back up on the 3rd place truck but didn't try to overtake it since I knew we'd have to pit soon. Once we came in to pit, we experienced some minor difficulty with changing a wheel on the right side, wound up losing some positions, and came back out in 7th. I wasn't too worried about it since it was still early in the race and felt we had a good enough truck that we could get those positions back on the track. However, on restarts we haven't been very fast and this time was no exception. I got shuffled back a few more spots and was just barely running in the top 10. Our next stop was really our undoing. I came down pit road in 9th place looking for 4 tires and gas. This time there was a problem with changing the left side tires. What we hoped would be at most a 20 second stop wound up taking almost 33 seconds. We went a lap down in the process that we couldn't overcome. I found out later that the problem was a malfunctioning air gun. Well those things happen. To add insult to injury, we probably should have only taken 2 right side tires or none at all. We'll just learn from these things and move on. Once back out on track, we were still fast. Although that last pit stop dropped us down to 20th position, we passed enough trucks to fight our way back up to 14th by the end of the race. Afterwords, the guys were heartbroken about the pit stops but I was so elated about our speed on the track that I tried to overcome their dejection with my happiness. The cool thing about our team is that we like, believe in, and support each other whole-heartedly and know that sooner or later, everything is going to swing in our favor.

Š2002 Bobby Hamilton Racing