TruckSeries.com Report | 11-15-2005

Billy Ballew Motorsports Team Rebounds from Practice Incident to Capture 11th Place Finish at Phoenix

Billy Ballew Motorsports and driver Kyle Busch rebounded from a practice incident on Thursday that resulted in the team unloading the backup truck to capture 11th place in the Silverado 150 at Phoenix International Raceway this past Friday evening.  Even a flat tire during the race wouldn’t diminish their hopes of obtaining a top finish in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series’ next to last event of the 2005 season.

The first practice session started off well on Thursday afternoon, with the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidations Chevrolet winding up fifth on the speed charts.  Busch and Crew Chief Richie Wauters decided to make some minor changes for the second practice session.  Coming off of turn four, Busch got loose and lost control of the No. 15 Silverado, sending him into the wall seriously damaging the entire right side of the truck.  The Billy Ballew Motorsports team hustled to get the backup truck out of the hauler in time to get Busch some laps on the track before the practice session ended.

“I am not totally sure what happened,” said Busch following the incident.  “We were trying some things and obviously they didn’t work.  It just got away from me. We made pretty hard contact with the wall pretty much destroying the right front. It is too bad because our ditech.com/National Land Liquidators Silverado was good.”

Not to worry though, Busch’s backup truck was just as good, if not better.  The team hurried to get the parts and pieces off the primary truck onto the backup in hopes of getting Busch back on the track.  Busch himself went to work removing necessary parts that would need to be converted over to the second truck.  Not a problem.  With a little over 20 minutes to spare, Busch jumped in the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidators Chevrolet and proceeded to post the sixth quickest time of the 38 competitors.

For qualifying, Busch turned a lap that would place him third fastest in the starting lineup. “First, I want to thank all my guys for all they did to get this backup truck ready. They did an awesome job.  That was cool.  They had to work entirely too hard to turn it around. That’s championship stuff right there.”

For the most part, the truck was handling well for the limited amount of laps Busch had practiced in it.  During the second caution on lap 16, Busch radioed in that the truck was a little tight in turns one and two and suggested maybe a trackbar adjustment on their first pit stop.  Their first stop came on lap 42 during the third caution.  The crew changed four tires, added fuel and went up two rounds on the trackbar.  A long green flag run of almost 50 laps killed the front tires and the No. 15 ditech.com/National Land Liquidators Chevrolet had dropped to seventh place.  On lap 98, Busch radioed he had a flat right front tire and was coming in that lap.  The crew changed all four tires and also pulled a rubber out of the left rear.

The green flag stop caused the Billy Ballew Motorsports team to go two laps down to the leaders.  On lap 103, Busch, with much fresher tires, was able to pass the leader to gain one of his two laps back.  Busch kept digging and managed to pick up more positions to be able to be the recipient of the “Lucky Dog” free pass.  Busch would now try to work his way through the field to contend for the win.  By the checkered flag, Busch had moved his way up to 11th place.

“We worked all during practice to make it turn better in the middle,” said Busch.  “Obviously, we went a little too far on the truck yesterday so we took that back out of this one.  There at the end of the race, the track got tight.  We couldn’t have been that way off with the truck.  It was unfortunate we got a flat tire but I was driving hard and wore out the front tires.  We’ve got one last shot coming at Homestead next week.  I’m aiming to win.”

Billy Ballew Motorsports dropped to fifth in the series’ owner points, but is still within reach of a podium finish with one race remaining in the 2005 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series schedule.  The Ford 200 takes place Friday evening from the Homestead-Miami Speedway.