Ergon Racing Lands Top-15 in Highly Caffeinated Mountain Dew 250
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posted on October 04, 2008
Ergon Racing Lands Top-15 in Highly Caffeinated Mountain Dew 250Andretti Finishes 14th at Talladega Superspeedway
TALLADEGA, Ala. (October 4, 2008) – The Mountain Dew 250 at Talladega Superspeedway produced exactly what race fans have come to love about the 2.66 mile speedway – non-stop battles for the lead, side-by-side racing action and lightning fast speeds. John Andretti and the Ergon Racing team spent the majority of the event battling up front, but a late-race accident left Andretti in the back of the pack with under 10 laps remaining. The veteran driver charged hard for the final circuits and finished in 14th-place.
Andretti started the race from 18th-place. It didn’t take long for the Indianapolis native to crack into the top-10. By the end of the first lap, Andretti had piloted the Ergon Tundra into the ninth position. Andretti held his spot until the first caution period, lap 19, when he relinquished it to make a pit stop. Crew chief Doug George called for his team to change the right-side tires on the No. 15 machine and top off the fuel cell. They sent Andretti back on the track in ninth-place for the restart.
The race went green on lap 23. George decided to stretch the truck’s fuel mileage and leave his driver on the track until lap 56, which would allow the team to finish the race with only one more pit stop. As the leaders began making pit stops, Andretti picked up one position after the other. Finally Andretti took over the lead on lap 54 and showed the way for two laps. The team serviced the Ergon Toyota on lap 56, but the late stop put Andretti out of sequence with the rest of the field, and left him without a drafting partner to keep pace with the leaders. When he returned to the track, Andretti was in 20th-place.
A fortuitous caution waved on lap 67, before the lead pack tracked down Andretti. After some quick math, George realized that the additional yellow flag laps would allow the Ergon Tundra to go the distance without making another pit stop, so he elected to leave Andretti on the track. The decision moved the Ergon Tundra into second-place for the restart, lap 77.
Andretti hung strong in the lead pack as the laps counted down. Just when it looked like everything was going his way, a wreck ahead of him on lap 84 turned everything around, literally. As Andretti checked up to avoid the melee, the truck behind him drove into the back of the Ergon Tundra and spun it down the backstretch. Fortunately Andretti did not hit the wall and escaped without sustaining any significant damage to his truck. The only service the No. 15 truck needed was for the crew to replace the flat spotted tires. Following service, Andretti returned to the track in 20th-place for the restart.
The race went green again on lap 88. With six short laps remaining, Andretti made a mad dash towards the front. With help for his spotter, Andretti worked his way back into the top-15 to take the checkers in 14th-place.
“The fans saw a wild race today,” said Andretti. “Everyone was running two and three wide for most of the day. There was action all over the place, that’s for sure.
“We had a great truck and we were hanging tough with the leaders for most of the race. I wish that we had been in the lead for the restart (lap 77), instead of second-place. We ended up getting shuffled back and forth during the next few laps, and that’s when we got caught up in the accident. If we had been up front, I think we could have hung onto the lead and avoided trouble. We ended up with a top-15, though and that’s not too bad.”
