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2003

MBNA Armed Forces Family 400

June 1, 2003
Dover, DE

 

Pre-Race

Derrike and the Quest Team will be running in the MBNA Armed Forces Family 400 this Sunday at Dover, Delaware. Looking ahead to this weekend Derrike said, "Dover is a critical race for us. We will be running for Friendly’s this Sunday and the following weekend at Pocono. We will need to be at the top of our game for Dover and are working hard in preparation for qualifying Friday and Sunday’s race."

In the first practice, Derrike was 39th fastest of 45 drivers with a time of 23.474 and speed of 153.361.

In qualifying, Derrike went out as the 17th driver and was loose in turn 4 before he took the green flag. The car continued to be loose in the center of the turns and after the first lap, Derrike decided that was enough and pulled the car to the garage. The lap was 23.813 and speed was 151.178 which put him in last place at the time.

At the end of the round, the #37 Chevrolet was still in last place and since the team was lowest in Owner's provisional points, Derrike will miss the race.

Official Report

Regarding qualifying, Derrike said, "I will start by saying that we just made a few bad decisions that ultimately cost us. Ernie and I made an aggressive choice in the chassis that we probably did not need for the weather conditions, thus the car was very loose and turned sideways on me in turns 3 & 4 and cost us the lap. The car was fast enough in all our practice speeds to have made the race. So, I have to say that we are improving the race car every week, and the speed is coming. The engine ran very well...we we both very pleased with how it performed. We just have to put it behind us and go on to Pocono and try and redeem ourselves."

Live Reports

Mark Phelps will be at the race and will be providing a live report later.

 

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