Monday
Max Gresham’s Top-Five Streak Ends At Columbus Motor Speedway
Press Release
Gresham, the leader in the K&N East championship chase, started on the pole in oppressively hot weather conditions after blistering the Columbus .333-mile oval with a lap of 14.176 seconds in qualifying. The Coors 21 pole was the fourth of the year in nine K&N events for the 18-year-old Griffin, GA driver.
“We had another top qualifying run and I have to credit my Joe Gibbs Racing crew for that,” said Gresham after time trials. “They put in a lot of hours in the shop and another pole run like this accounts for every one of them They got cooked out here today in this heat. You have no idea how much I really appreciate everything they do.”
Gresham quickly pointed his World Crown 300 Toyota into the lead at the drop of the green flag and paced the first 35 circuits before Darrell Wallace, Jr. slipped past for the top spot. Now battling a tight handling condition, Gresham continued to slip back in the field falling to fourth at the halfway point of the 150-lap contest.
Gresham, the winner of the most recent K&N event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last weekend, fell back as far as ninth in the running order at one point thanks to being gridded in the outside lane in a pair of caution-related restarts.
With just over 20 laps to go, Gresham drove through a pair of wrecks down the stretch to finish seventh – not what he had hoped for, but still a solid finish considering the circumstances.
Wallace soldiered on to win the event followed by Alex Bowman. Brett Moffitt hammered his way through the field to finish third followed by Matt DiBenedetto, Daniel Suarez, Chase Elliott and Gresham.
“It turned out to be kind of a rough night,” said Gresham. “We just didn’t have the car exactly where we wanted it. It went away early in the race and we just couldn’t get it back. There were also some guys out there who just weren’t thinking properly and sadly, we were a victim of that too.
“Still, we got another top-10 finish and completed all the laps. Now it’s on to Greenville-Pickens where, hopefully, we’ll have a better car there than we did in the first race of the season,” Gresham concluded. “We’ll be going down there looking to give everyone a good waxing.”
Gresham still has an 80-point lead over Moffitt with three races remaining in the 2011 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East championship battle. Wallace, Jr. and DiBenedetto are still in the title chase, 100 and 116 markers behind respectively.
Gresham will have to wait more than a month before he again gets to strap on the No. 18 JGR Toyota as the series is now idle until Labor Day weekend and an event at Greenville-Pickens Speedway on Monday, September 5.
That doesn’t mean that the Griffin, GA teenager will be inactive as he will compete in a pair of Automobile Racing Club of America events – the first coming this Thursday in the Ansell Protective Gloves 200 at Lucas Oil Raceway in Clermont, IN.
Gresham will steer the No. 25 Venturini Motorsports Toyota in that event, a race that will be telecast live on SPEED TV at 7 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday.
Additional information about Max Gresham can be accessed at www.MaxGresham.com.
- Max Gresham Motorsports Press Release
Article Tags: Alex Bowman, Ansell Protective Gloves 200, ARCA, Automobile Racing Club of America, Brett Moffitt, Chase Elliott, Columbus Motor Speedway, Daniel Suarez, Darrell Wallace Jr., Greenville-Pickens (S.C.) Speedway, Lucas Oil Raceway, Matt DiBenedetto, Max Gresham, NASCAR K&N Pro Series East, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, NKNPSE, No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry, No. 18 World Crown 300 Toyota Camry, No. 25 Venturini Motorsports Toyota Camry
