Eric McClure/ No. 24 Hefty brand Chevrolet - Post Race Report: Sam's Town 300

The NASCAR Nationwide Series traveled to its second west coast facility in as many weeks to compete on the 1.5 mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The weekend started off on a positive note for Eric McClure and Front Row Motorsports, as their performance improved significantly early in the week before a persistent rear-end vibration forced the team to survive the caution-filled event to finish the Sam’s Town 300 in the 22nd position.

Qualifying for the Sam’s Town 300 took place prior to the start of the event. After making improvements on the handling of the No. 24 Chevrolet during the final practice, the Hefty® brand team chose not to make a mock qualifying run before time trials. During the qualifying session, the team gained nearly a second from their best practice lap to post the 30th position to start the NNS event.

It didn’t take long before the cautions starting flowing as the first of thirteen yellow flags occurred on lap two. McClure was battling an extremely free car at this point and had slid back to the 33rd position, but the team made the decision to stay out with hopes the car would eventually come to McClure. The third caution of the event on lap 24 saw the Hefty® brand team make their first pit stop where four tires, fuel, and an air pressure adjustment were received. McClure restarted the event in the 25th position.

On lap 44, the Emory and Henry College graduate began to report a vibration in the rear-end of his Chevrolet that caused him to have no control of the car. Unfortunately for the Hefty® brand team, the vibration was persistent and it continued throughout the remainder of the event, but the team never gave up. McClure managed to survive the event to post his highest finish of the 2008 season, 22nd.

Eric McClure quotes:

We were some better than California for sure. Cal and the guys really had the car pretty good in the last practice and I was just getting laps and comfortable with the new package. We had a decent qualifying run, too, certainly a step in the right direction.

The race started out ok, we kind of held our own for the first 50 laps, then we picked up a bad vibration in the car which really hurt what speed we had. We really had to wrestle it around, even falling off as far as we did, and I think we may have gotten in the way of the leaders once, which I hate. Fortunately, from then on, we were able to stay out of the way and finish. It doesn’t show, but we were better this week than last. We’ll keep working on it. If we can survive Atlanta, we start to hit some better tracks for us I think.”