Derrike Cope Fan Club
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2005

Nextel Open

May 21, 2005
Concord, NC

  

Pre-Race

Derrike will be running in the Saturday race at Charlotte May 21st. According to Derrike, "I'm looking forward to being behind the wheel of Larry Gunselman's #60 Chevy for the All-Star Challenge. I am anxious to compete and to represent Year One. Kevin King is a super individual and we are pleased to be giving him additional exposure at Charlotte. We really appreciated his support and sponsorship at Daytona."

In the first practice of 28 cars, Derrike was 27th fastest with a time of 30.965 and speed of 174.390.

In qualifying, Derrike produced a lap of 29.545 with speed of 182.772. At the end of the round, Derrike was in 21st position. He had these comments about the run, "The Year One Chevy qualified 21st. It was not a bad effort with the very limited number of laps we had with the car. There was still some left in the car. I missed the first corner a bit and that would have increased the speed significantly. But, it is a good start to see how this car will react for future races. This was my first time driving this car and I am excited. It has good tendencies and should be a car I can go to the race track with with confidence. We will do our best tonight and lean more about this car in race trim."

The Race

Derrike started the race in 21st position and also finished in 21st position.
 
Start Finish Status Money
Won		 Laps Laps
Led		 Race
Points		 Standing
21 21 Running $30,275 30/30   --- ---

Official Report

Derrike had these comments about the race. "Charlotte went pretty well in my opinion. We had a few small problems leading up to qualifying and with the unstable weather conditions, we did not get to do a simulated qualifying lap and just had to make numerous changes and just guess. We had a fairly good qualifying lap.

"As for the race we were a little bit too tight but ran productively. We made some adjustments just to test the car out and ran some good lap times. We now have some data on this car and it will go through tech well. We will look forward and try and get to some Cup races here in the near future."

 
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