Rain, Ill-Handling Car Makes Long Weekend for Yeley & DLP Team

J.J. Yeley fought the weather and an ill-handling race car en route to a disappointing 29th-place finish in the rain-delayed Auto Club 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race Feb. 24-25 at the Auto Club Speedway of Southern California in Fontana.

Yeley, who started 25th in the No. 96 DLP HDTV Toyota Camry, could never get the car quite to his liking and finished two laps down in the 250-lap race.

“It was a tough weekend,” Yeley said. “A lot of the practice time was rained out, as was qualifying. We only ran seven laps of practice on Saturday, and it would have been nice to have that practice time to work on the car.

“We just could never get the car to handle the way we needed it to. I appreciate the efforts of all the guys on the DLP team this weekend, especially with all the rain. Obviously, we need to get back and work on some things to get better for Las Vegas and Atlanta.”

The race, originally scheduled for 1 p.m. PST on Sunday, did not begin until nearly two-and-a-half hours later due to wet weather, and wetness from the sky wasn’t the only problem.

The heavy rains that had uncharacteristically doused the Southern California track raised the water table considerably, and no matter how hard safety crews attempted to dry the track, water would bubble up and seep through cracks and seams in the track’s surface. “Weeping,” as drivers referred to it, was especially pronounced in the track’s corners, and NASCAR needed to halt the race for a little over an hour after a multi-car crash on lap 21 was triggered when Casey Mears lost control of his car after it broke traction on one of the wet spots in the track’s corners.

Racing resumed on lap 26, but stuttered to a stop when light rain returned from lap 41 to lap 47, and again on lap 87 when heavy rain forced NASCAR to red flag the race a second time. Try as they might, safety crews could not dry the track once the rain had abated, as water continued to seep onto the racing surface. Finally, NASCAR made the call to restart the race at 10 a.m. PST on Monday.

In the Sunday night portion of the race, the DLP crew thought they might have an issue with the carburetor on the No. 96 car, and when the race restarted on Monday, the crew changed the carburetor just before the green flag. While any issue with the carburetor seemed to be settled, the car’s ill-handling characteristics dashed any chance of a good finish for Yeley and the DLP team.

Yeley’s 29th-place result puts him 28th in the championship point standings. After two races, Yeley has 164 points and is 171 markers behind series leader Kyle Busch.

Carl Edwards won the Auto Club 500 to score his eighth career Sprint Cup victory and his first at Fontana. Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth rounded out the top-five. Martin Truex Jr., Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne and Newman comprised the remainder of the top-10.

There were 12 caution periods for 44 laps, with two drivers failing to finish the 500-mile race.

The next event on the Sprint Cup schedule is the March 2 UAW-Dodge 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The race begins at 4:30 p.m. EST with live, high-definition coverage provided by FOX beginning with its pre-race show at 3:30 p.m. The race will also be broadcast live on SIRIUS Satellite Radio Channel 128.