Ben Rhodes Race Recap:
Ben Rhodes, driver of the No. 41 Texas Roadhouse Toyota Tundra, made his third career start at Martinsville Speedway in Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Texas Roadhouse 200 presented by Alpha Energy Solutions. Starting 14th, Rhodes maintained a position inside the top-15 throughout the 200-lap event, fighting a “loose on entry, and tight on exit” Toyota Tundra. Crew chief Kevin Bellicourt brought the No. 41 machine to pit road at laps 51, 109, and 150, for four tires, fuel, and adjustments. Restarting 14th, with 45 laps remaining, the ThorSport Racing driver was able to work his way up to 12th before being forced down pit road at lap 177, under yellow, for no oil pressure. Unfortunately, Rhodes would also be served with a penalty for, “too fast entering,” and restarted from the tail end of the field, in the 21st position. In the final 18 laps, Rhodes was able to gain two positions to finish 19th behind race winner, Johnny Sauter.
Ben Rhodes Quote:
“We struggled all day long with our Texas Roadhouse Toyota Tundra – just a weird phenomenon going on with the rear of the truck – wheel hopping, brake bias not fixing it, just couldn’t quite get the rear-end underneath us. We also had some brake issues throughout the race. It finally started coming to us, and we got some speed in the truck on the last run. I think we were 10th at the time, and Ben (Kennedy) was ninth. We passed several trucks, I was just trying to keep the run going. I gave him a little nudge, and got him up the track a little bit, but he was slowing down to try and keep it on the bottom. I got into him a second time, on the bottom, and it spun him around. It’s unfortunate how it happened, that wasn’t my intention. When you do that, you just want to get passed him. I wanna race people the way I wanna be raced. At the same time, I wasn’t very appreciative of the gestures I got from them either. I guess that’s Martinsville for ya though, it tends to bring out the best in everybody.”
Thorsport PR
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