By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
A strong performance in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway is exactly what the doctor ordered for Roush-Fenway Racing and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
The two days at Bristol was one filled with adversity for Stenhouse. On lap 62 on Sunday, Stenhouse was involved in an accident in turn four. On lap 134, Stenhouse was busted on pit road for an outside half of the pit box tire violation. Om lap 257, the team was busted again for having too many crew members in contact with the pit area.
Despite the penalties on pit road, Stenhouse knew that they had a car capable of running towards the front.
“The guys brought me a great Sunny D Ford all weekend long. We were really, really strong and I felt confident coming into the race yesterday and today. We fought adversity. We lost track position multiple times and had to pass a lot of cars to get back to where we were,” Stenhouse said.
During the long green flag run in the later stages of the race Brian Pattie, crew chief, called Stenhouse down pit road for fresh tires. At the time, the pit call was considered risky, but as the run progressed Stenhouse was able to work his way to second before the final caution flew on lap 471.
If it was not for the final caution, Stenhouse believed he had a car that could have competed for the race win.
“I think so. The newer tires that we had were gonna be better for us to catch the 42 on the long run. My spotter was kind of keeping me posted once I got into second where the 42 was and I was gonna start pushing really hard there to run him down over the last 30 laps. I wish it would have stayed green. That would have been nice, but then that caution came out and I still thought we were gonna have a shot at it,” Stenhouse continued.
With the risky call by Pattie, Stenhouse was able to score his season best finish of fourth at the “Last Great Coliseum”. Stenhouse sits 18th in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points standings, just 203 points behind leader, Kyle Busch.