Bashas’ Supermarkets 200 at Phoenix International Raceway
February 26, 2011
Race Highlights:
* Brian Scott qualified the No. 11 Shore Lodge Toyota in the fifth position for the Bashas’ Supermarkets 200. It was his best NASCAR Nationwide Series qualifying effort at Phoenix International Raceway.
* The No. 11 Toyota ran in the top 10 through the first caution flag of the race. The car lacked right-side grip and was loose in turns three and four. Crew chief Kevin Kidd called for a trackbar adjustment on the team’s first pit stop on lap 55 along with four tires and fuel. Scott restarted from the eighth position.
* Scott was hung out on the lap 58 restart and dropped back to the 14th position. The changes on the first stop did not help the handling on the Shore Lodge Toyota, so Kidd made additional changes on the next pit stop and the pit crew picked up several spots in the pits. Scott was back into the top 10 on lap 112. He battled his way into the seventh position, but lost control of his No. 11 Toyota with two laps to go. He was able to recover, continue on and finish ninth.
It was Scott’s first top-10 finish at the one-mile Phoenix track.
* There were three cautions for 15 laps in the race with 12 cars finishing on the lead lap. Scott’s teammate Kyle Busch led all 200 laps to take the checkered flag, while teammate Joey Logano finished sixth.
* Scott gained 11 positions in the NASCAR Nationwide Series standings following his ninth-place finish at Phoenix and now sits 12th, 33 points behind leader Reed Sorenson.
“Unfortunately we fell back and then came forward in the Shore Lodge Toyota when all you want to do is go forward all day in a race. Our guys did a good job. We didn’t start the race like we wanted, fighting some things and made some adjustments and went the wrong way. We got right back on track, tuned in our No. 11 Shore Lodge Toyota and started coming back to the front. It looked like we were going to finish seventh and I just lost it going into (turn) three with a couple laps to go. It cost us a couple spots, unfortunately.
The guys deserve a seventh-place finish and instead we got ninth. At least we finished in the top 10. We’re beginning to rebound from Daytona and that’s what we needed to do. All in all, not a terrible day, we’ll just move forward and go to Vegas.”
“I have a great group of guys, I like them a lot. I think that we’re going to have a lot of success throughout the year. We’re still learning some things and figuring some things out. I think we’ll just keep getting better. For our second race, running seventh is a pretty good day. We’ll just move on and keep getting better as a team.”
- Joe Gibbs Racing Press Release
