Miami 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway
November 19, 2011
Race Highlights:
· Brian Scott and the No. 11 Shore Lodge Toyota Team picked up the 11th starting position for the NASCAR Nationwide Series finale in Homestead-Miami Speedway on Saturday afternoon. The Shore Lodge Toyota was a little too free for Scott during qualifying so the team went into Saturday’s race with a plan to tighten the car at the first opportunity.
· The loose-handling issue on the Shore Lodge Toyota was a problem during the first several laps of the race but Scott struggled more with the restarts – an issue exacerbated by the loose-handling problem. As a result, Scott was back in the 13th position by the time the competition caution waved at lap 35.
· A super-fast pit stop by the No. 11 Shore Lodge crew placed Scott in the sixth position for the restart at lap 39. The loose-handling issue persisted during the next run however and Scott once again found himself losing a handful of positions. The team elected to make a track bar adjustment during the next stop at lap 90 while also changing four tires and adding fuel.
· Scott was once again running in the 13th position by the time the field reached the halfway point in the race so the team took another swing at the adjustments on the car during a stop under caution at lap 131. Scott restarted the race from the 10th position and from that point on, would never drop further than the 11th position.
· A series of cautions would come out during the final 25 laps of the race. The Shore Lodge Toyota team made its final stop of the race during the seventh caution at lap 175. Scott restarted the race from the 10th position. As the laps wound down, Scott battled his way to the ninth position where he was running when the checkered flag finally waved.
· Scott’s Joe Gibbs Racing Teammates Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano finished the race in the fifth and 10th positions, respectively.
· The team’s ninth-place finish on Saturday evening moved Scott back up to eighth place in the final 2011 NASCAR Nationwide Series driver point standings. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., finished second in Saturday’s race and captured the 2011 Nationwide Series driver championship.
“I’ll take a top 10 to end the year. We fought hard ever since Daytona. We didn’t have the performance or the results that we wanted until about the middle of the year. This team – we flipped the switch. Kevin (Kidd, crew chief) and I really got on the same page and we started having good runs. We were a pretty good team the second half of the year. Definitely performed the last quarter of the year with some top-five finishes, and got a pole at Chicago. We’re going to focus really on the last part of the year and continue to build and do the things that we started doing at the middle of the year that will make us better to come back in 2012 and be even stronger.
I don’t see any reason why this team can’t make the progress through the off-season and come back with the yellow and black Dollar General car and have a team good enough to run for the championship. I feel like Kevin Kidd (crew chief) and I have a relationship that is on really good terms. We’re really communicating well. We’re going to continue to work through the off-season just as hard – if not harder – than we worked all year. Come back and be a really strong team.”
- Joe Gibbs Racing Press Release
