Busch’s Win Propels Gibbs To Record-Tying Nationwide Total

JOLIET, Ill. (July 11, 2008) – It looked like David Reutimann had the Dollar General 300 all wrapped up Friday night at the Chicagoland Speedway, but a changing track and a guy named Kyle Busch took the Nationwide Series race and made it look easy.

Reutimann, whose Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota started on the pole, led 83laps during the first 150, was disappointed that his early race strength didn’t last for all 200 laps. “We just seemed to not be able to keep up with the race track. We just seemed to be one adjustment behind all night. We took a big (adjustment) swipe at the end trying to do something to make the car better, but the car just didn’t react like we needed it to. We ended up fifth, but disappointing,” said Reutimann.

Busch, who now has won five series events in 2008, led 101 laps, most in the final stages, as his Z-Line Design Toyota got better as the race went on, and he also found a faster route around the 1.5 mile circuit. “In the beginning it wasn’t looking so great. We were fighting a tight racecar and then we began to make adjustments. There in the beginning we were kind of stuck around fourth, fifth, sixth place,” said the Joe Gibbs pilot who’s not known for being patient when he’s out of the lead. “We followed Brad Keselowsk’s line and that got me going a little bit better. We made the biggest adjustments about lap 90 (during a caution for debris), and that really got things woken up.”

Tony Stewart, who started on the front row with Reutimann, experienced problems just as the green flag dropped. His Old Spice Toyota was bumped by Jeff Burton at the s/f line and spent much of the early race in the pits trying to repair the damage. Stewart came back to finish ninth, just behind Burton.

Landon Cassill’s tenth place finish was the highest finish among the series rookies, though Bryan Clauson retained the Raybestos Rookie lead despite not competing at Chicagoland.

Denny Hamlin chased Busch across the line 3.120 sec. behind followed by Keselowski, Brian Vickers and Reutimann. Vickers may have had a better result, but he was assessed a drive through penalty on lap 41 for being too fast in the pits, and spent the rest of the event catching up with the leaders.

Busch averaged 144.443MPH in a race that had ten lead changes among six drivers. The final 107 laps were run without a caution.

“I was glad that we were able to adjust the car early in the race because we had such a long green run there at the end. It was a great race by all the guys in the Nationwide Series, being able to run those last laps under green. Our car stayed the same at the end and just stayed out front,” said the winningest driver in NASCAR in 2008.

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

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