Stater Bros. 300

February 25, 2006
Fontana, CA

Derrike was not planning on driving in the Busch race, but according to Derrike, "Jorge Goeters, the Mexican driver that won the Mexico City Busch race last year, did not get approved. So at the last minute I jumped in the car. We are not bad with limited track time. During the final practice we lost the clutch on our simulated qualifying lap, so I think we will be better tomorrow in qualifying."

There is also a new rule in the Busch series that the past champion provisional can only be used once in every 8 races. Since Steve Grissom used it at Daytona the team is left trying to make the race on speed.

So Derrike will be driving the #49 Advil Ford in the Busch race. In the first practice, he was 39th fastest with a time of 40.836 and speed of 176.315. In the second practice, he was 41st fastest with a time of 41.202 and speed of 174.749.

In qualifying, Derrike had a fastest lap of 40.984 with a speed of 175.678. At the end of the round because of others using provisionals, the team was left in 44th position and missed the race.

As far as the qualifying effort, Derrike had this to say. "As for missing the race, we were very loose and I could not stay in the throttle. Missing most of the last practice session with clutch problems did not allow us to make a simulated qualifying lap. The new nose for the Ford Fusion has a lot of front down force and with the addition of tape on the nose, it just pinned the nose too hard and we just did not have any grip. They just need to spend some time testing to get a feel for the balance in this new car. We were decent in practice before our problems but just did not make the right adjustments for weather and the tape.