 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Daytona 2005 Late Race Incidents Ruin the Day John Andretti and the #14 VB/APlus at Sunoco Ford team laid back throughout the race and the strategy looked as though it was going to work. Following a late race caution, the green came back out with 35 laps to go and had John brought the car in for a quick fill-up on the last lap of caution. With most other cars needing to pit again, the team was in a position to conserve fuel and perhaps have a great finish. This all came to an end a few laps later when Mike Bliss got into the wall, causing Travis Kvapil to move down to avoid him only to hit John and send him spinning. Though he kept it off the wall, he was tagged pretty hard by Jason Leffler on the drivers side. That damage, coupled with the damage to the front end of the car when he came off the banking, took the fight out of the car. When the green came back out, John was a full 10 MPH off the pace. A decent finish was still in the offing as another crash took out 5 or 6 cars ahead of John. John came out fo the pits in 23rd when the green waved. Unfortunately, the waving of the flag was the end of
the day for John. Someone ahead of him couldn't get going, which created the accordian
crash and John followed his spotters orders to 'go low', but with the steering knocked out
of whack by the previous crash, John couldn't get low enough and drove into the spinning
Mike Skinner. Despite a tremendously hard hit which bent his steering wheel, luckily John
was uninjured. After all was said and done, the team finished in 31st place. Said John, “I felt like we had the car handling pretty good
and then we got spun around,” said Andretti. “The
last one I was trying to keep up because we had a torn-up race car. I wanted to keep up with the pack for the last few
laps, but then something happened in front of us. I
went low, but I couldn’t get any lower cause there were cars there. It was a hard hit
(with Mike Skinner) for both of us, but I just want to thank VB and APlus at Sunoco and
all the people at Ford. We had a good race,
but the last incident ended our day.” As they head to California for the next race, once again, we are at the mercy of the weather and the guaranteed spots for the top 35 teams from last year. Making the races is the immediate goal for these first 5 events. Watching the race today, I couldn't help but notice that even though it looked like we were struggling, toward the end of the race is when John and the team decided it was time to go. John was moving up nicely when he was hit but Kvapil and it's just a shame that we didn't get to see what was capable of being done. Nevertheless, I think we all have seen the spark of excitement that this team brings. Not even a team 4 months ago, they have done a tremendous job and should only get better as the year progresses.
|
|
