No Brakes Lead to Tough Break for Armstrong at Bristol

Armstrong and his No. 98 EverFi Toyota Tundra team headed to Bristol Motor Speedway with high hopes for another solid finish in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS.) However, with only 52 laps under his belt, Armstrong had to pull his truck behind the wall to get worked on because of a lack of breaks. It was a tough break for the EverFi team that ultimately wouldn’t end their night, but would take them out of contention for another great finish. They would end the NCWTS UNOH 200 in the 30th position.   

“It ended up being a disappointing night for me and my team, but I really feel like we had a strong truck on long runs. The fastest lap we ran in practice was with 62 laps on our tires. We thought we were going to be really fast in the race. My team worked really hard to put together this EverFi Toyota, and I wish the night would have turned out differently.”

The No. 98 EverFi crew, led by crew chief Dan Stillman, worked hard in both practices to get Armstrong’s truck’s kinks worked out before the race. Armstrong was complaining of his truck being too tight in the center of the corners, and Stillman and the EverFi crew rallied back in the second practice to help make his truck turn better through the center.

“I can’t say enough about how hard my guys worked to get the truck ready for the race. Every change they made was positive, and by the end of the second practice, even though we were 19th, I feel like in the race we were going to definitely be a top 10 contender again.”

 When the green flag dropped for the UNOH 200, Armstrong was starting in the 18th position. He held his position for the first 20 laps, but then his truck seemed to be falling off. This is when Armstrong came on the radio and told his crew that his truck’s brakes were getting too hot, and his pedal was going to the floor. After trying to ride it out waiting for a yellow that would not come in time, Stillman radioed for Armstrong to bring the truck in to the pits. It was then that the team noticed that the bleeder had fallen off, and the truck’s brake fluids had all leaked out which caused Armstrong to have no brakes at all. The EverFi Toyota Tundra crew brought the truck behind the wall to begin repairing the bleeder and were able to get Armstrong back out on the track 32 laps down.

“We had a really good truck, and it was hard to see our night turn out like that.”

 On lap 135 out of 200, Armstrong was relaying to Stillman that he had a fluid on his windshield, and it was making it hard to see. Stillman told Armstrong to come in to the pits to remove a tear off on the windshield and he was back on the track. Armstrong finished the race in the 30th position, but said that after the bleeder was fixed, he was able to follow behind the leaders and stay right on their bumpers.

“I really want to thank my crew for the hard work they put into getting the truck ready for the race and for fixing it during the race. Tonight was just not our night, and things didn’t go as we thought they would, but that’s racing. We had a really good truck, but we had even worse luck. It was a disappointing night, but hopefully we can go to Atlanta and have a really good race.”

DAPR