An exciting and eventful race at Daytona International Speedway ended well for NASCAR Xfinity Driver, Benny Gordon and new team Performance Energy Group. Only his second start of the 2015 season and Gordon earned a career high finish of 5th in the Subway Firecracker 250. Gordon’s finish also accounted for the highest finishing Toyota of the race.
“With the help from Larry Mostoller from SRWR and Frank Varischetti from VSI, we built this team in May to compete at Talladega successfully,” says Gordon. “After seeing our results from there [finishing in 13th], we wanted to take a month off and properly build cars and a team that would be competitive. That was shown tonight considering we were able to run with the top tier teams in the series.”
Gordon, in the No. 66 SRWR/VSI Toyota Camry, started the Subway Firecracker 250 from 20th. By lap 23, Gordon broke into the top-10 and managed to make his way up to 7th.
After a long stretch of green flag racing, Crew Chief Howard Bixman called the No. 66 Toyota in under green flag conditions on lap 57. The pit crew changed all four Goodyear tires and topped the Toyota off with Sunoco fuel. Due to a slow pit stop, Gordon lost the draft and was set back to the 21st position for the next thirty laps.
Luck was on the team’s side when a caution came out on lap 80, just before Gordon was about to lose his lead lap security. Bixman called Benny in again for fuel only, in order to finish off the 100-lap race. After going green again, Gordon managed to maneuver around two different on-track incidents, suffering slight right front damage while doing so. The team was able to repair the damage to send Gordon back out and finish in the 5th position.
Gordon said, “I have to thank Howard for building this team and competitive cars over the last month. We started out with very little and he has established a plan and implemented it into a successful competitive team.
“Now that we have these positive results from this race, I think this entire crew will be highly motivated to go to the next race on our schedule. I have to thank our partners for their involvement in this race: SRWR, VSI, Motor Honey, MSM Global One, Lift Safety, BWP Bats, Stanley Industries, and CGS Imaging.”
Crew Chief, Howard Bixman was happy with the results at Daytona, “We’re all excited about the outcome we had on Saturday night,” says Bixman. “It truly shows how much talent not only Benny has as a driver, but the talent our small and new team has. The entire crew at Performance Energy Group has worked days and nights to get the #66 car ready for this race, starting from scratch. I can’t thank them enough as well as our partners who have supported our efforts.”
VSI Racing PR
