Following a near 300-mile battle with an extremely loose-handling race car, Rusty Wallace Racing’s Steve Wallace (No. 66 5-Hour Energy Toyota Camry) recorded a 16th-place finish in Saturday’s Sam’s Town 300 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
After mechanical issues the past several weeks, Wallace’s effort in Vegas propelled him back into the top-15 of the NASCAR Nationwide Series driver standings, at 14th place.
The Nationwide Series now heads into its first off-week of 2011. The series resumes March 19th with round four of the championship at the venerable Bristol Motor Speedway, site of Wallace’s first career Nationwide Series pole in 2007.
Stated Wallace, “Today was a tough one for sure. All weekend, we never really got a grip on this track like we needed. Today, it was really just a matter of how loose our car was. It’s frustrating because none of the changes we made really had a lot of positive effect. It was just one of those days.
“As a driver, you can only go as fast as the car will let you and then hope for a few breaks. If you have a fifth-place car, you need to finish fifth with it, a 30th-place car, then 30th. We had a few bad breaks, but I feel like we probably had a car capable of finishing about where we did.
“The fact of the matter is that finishing 16th isn’t acceptable to any of us. The one bright spot from today is that our team car-the No. 62-was pretty fast for most of the race. Our two teams were on two different platforms today in terms of some chassis stuff and if nothing else, this gave us some direction on which way we need to go.
“We’re not going to quit working until we get this 5-Hour Energy Toyota back up front again. We have some test sessions coming up that should really help us and then onto a short track at Bristol. I’m ready to get there.”
Rusty Wallace Racing PR
