Neighborhood Excellence 400

June 4, 2006
Dover, DE

Derrike is looking forward to driving at Dover. He said, "We are getting ready to take on the Monster Mile at Dover, Delaware this weekend. I will be driving the ADVIL FORD FUSION for Jay Robinson as well as the McGlynn Motor Sports Dodge with Sundance Vacations as the Primary sponsor this weekend and My Guardian 911 and Royal Administration as Associate Sponsors. We hope to make it five in a row as far as qualifying goes.

"I have yet to run this car. This is one of the cars that we bought from Penske. We took it to Bristol but as you know we were snowed out and did not get the chance to qualify. This car looks really good. It is a Dodge Charger. This, I believe, is the first Charger that I have driven excluding Daytona earlier this year.

"Practice starts at 9:00 am for the Busch series cars and our first practice is at 11:35 for the Cup Series.

"I am looking forward to racing 400 laps at Dover. John and Tina Dowd from Sundance Vacations, our Primary Sponsor for Dover, are supposed to be coming for the race. I can hardly wait to get going! I will update you Friday evening after qualifying to give you all the info on our effort."

In the first practice, Derrike was 39th fastest with a time of 23.990 and speed of 150.063.

In qualifying, Derrike ran his fastest lap of 23.913 with speed of 150.546. At the end of the round, the #74 Sundance Vacations Dodge was in 36th position where Derrike will start the race.

In the second practice, Derrike was 43rd fastest with a time of 24.780 and speed of 145.278. In Happy Hour, Derrike was 38th fastest with a time of 24.612 and speed of 146.270.

Derrike started the race in 36th position and finished in 37th.

Derrike updated us with the weekend so far. He said, "We have had a pretty productive weekend so far. We brought a Dodge Charger that we have never raced before and struggled a bit off the truck. We were very loose and had to work very hard to find some grip in the car. We made a few changes for qualifying and we got a little too tight in qualifying so my lap was not as good as I had hoped for, but it got us in the race. It rained with eight cars left to qualify which would have sent us home if the weather had not broken and they did not resume qualifying. So we were fortunate. It would have been a shame to have been locked in the race as we were at that time and then have to go home.

"We were a bit too tight in practice so we are making more changes today hoping to get the car to turn better in the middle of the corner.

"John and Tina Dowd are here from Sundance Vacations so we are hopeful of having a good race and getting a good finish. If we can just have a good solid day and stay out of trouble, we can learn some more about our cars and get better as we proceed to further races.

"I made an appearance at the Air Force base on Friday evening that went very well. I will be signing autographs at the Sundance booth at the track this morning. I will give an update after the race to fill you all in on how our day goes."

After the race he told us, "Although our finish did not show it, I felt like we had a pretty successful day. The car was pretty loose all day. It just took some laps for the air pressure to build up and then we were pretty quick. Our lap times were competitive most all day. We lost some laps when on one restart I thought we had a tire going down. It was great to run all day. I drove hard start to finish. The engine ran very well also. I think every one on the team was pleased. Sundance Vacations, Royal Administration, My Guardian 911, Jumpfly, and all the other entities that support Ray McGlynn and this race team should be proud of this effort.

"Next stop Pocono. I love to race there, so hopefully we can continue the qualifying streak and make the race. This is the team's backyard so we really want a great effort there."