Catchfence

Robert Richardson Jr.

The No. 23 Mahindra Tractors USA Chevrolet started out pretty good from our 27^th-place starting spot. We had some early cautions, which didn’t really help us find our groove. There were three cautions in the first six laps and that allowed me to move up only three positions.

We elected to stay out on the lap six caution, but I just about got caught up in it and thought I hit the No. 34 car (Tony Raines) from behind. But, the crew and spotter said it was all good, so we stayed out to keep racing.

Other leaders hit pit road and that allowed us to restart 17^th. I had Danica Patrick lined up to my outside and radioed to the crew that I was going to race with her a bit to get us some TV time. Hey, I might as well have fun with it, too, right?

Within a few laps, the car became free on entry and I was running 23^rd when the leaders hit pit road on lap 43. Just as I told my crew chief (John Quinn) that we better pit so we don’t run out of fuel, we ran out of fuel coming out of Turn 2.

When the car leveled out, it got some fuel in there and I was able to make it back to pit road. We changed tires, added fuel and made an air pressure adjustment. Because I had to slow so much to get to pit road, and then re-fire the engine a few times, it put us down one lap.

Another caution on lap 50 had us the second car, one-lap down to the leaders for the restart. It was me and John Wes Townley battling it out for the Lucky Dog. Just as I was in position to take advantage when a wreck broke out in front of me – I got caught in the darn thing.

I saw smoke here and smoke there, flashes of cars and my spotter was telling me to go low. But, the No. 16 car didn’t slide the way it was supposed to and I rammed right into his side.

My right front was tore up pretty bad, as were a bunch of other cars. I was on the trioval and was just about to put it in gear when a green No. 7 car came up on the track in front of me. We were all stopped, but Danica had me blocked for a couple of seconds and I sure as heck didn’t want to run into her car. It was already tore up pretty bad, anyhow.

I hit the gas and my back end slid down toward the apron, so I just turned down there and brought the car to pit road.

The crew lifted the hood and went to work on the right front fender. From what I could hear, it was quite a mess. They were cutting off sheet metal, pounding on the hood and working all they could to get it fixed enough to go back out.

We had to make one other stop under caution to fix some things, and we ended up going eight laps, then 13 laps to the leaders running 32^nd. Then, a huge wreck took place on the backstretch involving 10 cars on lap 91.

I saw Dale Jr’s car go rolling over and then land on its wheels. That collected more cars and ended their days earlier than planned. Our goal was to just finish the race and not get in anyone’s way to see how many positions we could earn.

In the end, we went from 32^nd to 25^th to gain seven positions at the checkered flag. I really have to hand it to our Mahindra Tractors crew; they were absolutely great in how they just kept working on the car so we could finish the race.

Heck, we picked up those seven spots in the last 20 laps because so many other cars were now out of the race. When you’re unsponsored like we are after this weekend on the No. 23 car, you go for all the points you can just to stay in the top-30 owner’s points.

So, our day wasn’t what I wanted or we had expected, but I had THE best car I have EVER driven at Daytona from the R3 Motorsports team. The No. 38 Cup car was pretty good in Happy Hour for tomorrow’s Daytona 500, too.

Tonight, I’m going to get a good dinner and a great night’s sleep. Tomorrow is going to be one of the biggest days of my racing career- and probably life. I’m in the Daytona 500.
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