Pit Road Troubles Relegate Rhodes To To A Top-20 Finish In Texas
How do you feel about your race tonight?
“Everything that I could control tonight, I feel like I did a good job on. Our Safelite Tundra was fast tonight, all night long. ThorSport is giving me some of the fastest Tundra’s they’ve ever built, and everything that we can control we’re doing right. The stuff that’s outside of our control seems to be hindering us – on speed, and we had a couple bad pit stops. We had a loose wheel, a pit gun broke, and miscommunication on pit road, so we had to come back in, and ended up however many laps down. Just a tough night. Now we’re on the outside of the Playoffs looking in, and we’ll just have to make something happen at Phoenix. Overall I feel like we had the fastest Tundra on the race track, but track position was huge, and we just kept getting messed over on the race track with cautions and pit strategy. We’ll just have to keep positive, move forward to Phoenix, and take a really, really fast Tundra there as well.”
How will you approach Phoenix to try to lock in to Homestead and compete for the championship?
“Really, it’s just going to come down to that. I just need to run in front of those guys all night long. It’s going to be situational – if they pit, when they pit. All I can do is my part, which is run in front of them all night long. If they’re on my bumper for every stage, and at the end of the race, then it looks like they’re going to be in the Playoffs, and I’m not. Really just need to win to guarantee it, and if we can do that then we don’t have anything to worry about.”
Team Information:
Started: 9th
Finished: 18th
Laps: 145/147
Laps Led: 0
Status: Running
Driver Points: 5th
Owner Points: 10th