Daytona Beach, FL – Feb 13, 2010. Sean Murphy had high expectations coming to Daytona for his third at-tempt at winning the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series NextEra Energy Resources 250. Sean’s previous races at Daytona ended in finishes of 24th and 20th. With a new truck, a new Crew Chief and a new sponsor in Dietz & Watson Premium Meat Delicacies, Murphy knew his chances of improving on those finishes at the World Center of Racing were very good.
Thursday night the native of Ft Lauderdale, FL qualified the No. 07 in the 34th position with a best lap of 52.35 seconds, not quite what the SS Green Light team had hoped for from the new truck. “We built this truck with a lot of down force so I knew we would not qualify up front, I was hoping for a little better than that,” said Crew Chief Jason Miller. “Sean is real comfortable in the draft and that is more important for me, it’s a long race.”
Following Friday night’s rainout, NASCAR officials moved the race to Saturday evening and before the green flag even flew Murphy was in trouble having made contact with another truck on the warm-up lap heavily dam-aging the left side of the Dietz & Watson Chevy. Sean was forced to pitroad for repairs before the race ever started and would have to run the entire race with an aerodynamically handicapped race truck.
Despite the damage, the Dietz & Watson No.07 ran fairly well in the draft as long as he stayed in line behind other trucks. Miller told Sean to hang back and stay out of more troubles until the end of the race. Two large melees typical at Daytona thinned the field and attrition moved Murphy up the running order into the top-15 where he smartly kept out of harms way waiting to make a move to the front at the finish.
Sean reached a high of third place just following pit stops at the races three-quarter mark and was running in the top-ten with less than five laps to go. He was ready for a charge to the front when Ryan Sieg blew a tire directly in front of him with only three laps remaining. Sean had to check-up to avoid the slowing truck in front of him and despite not making contact with Sieg, Murphy had slowed enough to loose the draft of the lead pack, drop-ping back to the thirteenth position without any drafting help to work back to the front pack.
Crew Chief Miller was proud of his young driver after the race. “Sean did a great job driving a damaged truck right from the start, he followed the plan of hanging back and staying out of harms way perfectly. If he had not got caught behind the 39 right there at the end, who knows where he could have finished. I’m proud of him and the whole SS Green Light team, they did a great job tonight.”
Murphy, suffering from flu-like symptoms all day was pleased with the top-15 finish. “There were a lot of torn-up race trucks out there tonight. That deal at the start really gave us a handicap with the aero on the truck, but I managed to stay out of trouble the rest of the way and I really thought we were going to get out of here with a top-ten.
“I really want to thank Dietz & Watson for coming on board with us and I hope that they will join us again. The blue, red and gold make a great looking truck. Plus the team had a great lunch of beef, ham, turkey and various cheeses before the race.”
For more on SS Green Light Racing visit www.SSRacingonline.com or email: pr@ssgreenlight.com.