Dustin Delaney (51 Sports Photo).
Delaney Battles Ill-Handling Car At Dover; Finishes 12th
Post-Race Report
Dustin Delaney was hoping to end the 2009 NASCAR Camping World Series East season on a high note, but an ill-handling No. 39 Delaney Infrastructure/CarDaddy.com Chevrolet dictated otherwise in the Sunoco 150 at Dover International Speedway Friday night. Delaney finished the race in the 12th position after starting 19th.
“We have some work to do – both myself and the team – to get running better at this track,” said Delaney. “We struggled all weekend. The car was just off. There were a lot of things that were against us, and it was just not the way we wanted to end the year. We’ll go to Kansas and try to get a top-10 out there in the ARCA race.”
Delaney moved up from 20th on the speed charts in Thursday’s practice session to 11th in the second session,
and believed things were moving in the right direction. His lap of 24.479 seconds (147.065 mph) in qualifying, however, was not what the team was hoping for.
At the drop of the green, Delaney was able to gain two spots right away, but was only able to maintain his position in 17th before caution came out. Delaney was in the first group to pit at lap 47. The team made some adjustments before returning the No. 39 Delaney Infrastructure Chevrolet to the race in the 15th spot. The adjustments didn’t help, and Delaney remained a fixture in the top-20.
“It was on and off. It would be good and then it would be tight to loose and then loose off and tight in,” explained Delaney. “The more the race went on the better the car was. It happened that way, but we missed out on the lucky dog every time so that didn’t help very much.”
A long green flag run in the latter stages of the race saw Delaney move up from 17th to 12th before the checkers dropped. It was a long day for the Mayfield, N.Y. native, who lost a lap to the leader before the checkers dropped. Only seven cars finished the race on the lead lap.
“We really wanted to gain some ground in the point standings today, but unfortunately, it wasn’t our day for that,” said Delaney. “We had to work with what we had and a 12th place finish was all that we had for today.”
Delaney closed out the season eighth in the NASCAR Camping World Series East point standings.
