Sorenson and Discount Tire Team Score Ninth Top 10 of 2006 at MIS

Reed Sorenson and the No. 41 Discount Tire team didn’t let a top-35 starting position hold them back very long Saturday at Michigan International Speedway, as they took over the lead on lap 25 of the 125-lap race. They went on to capitalize on a combination of fancy wheel work on the track and foot work on pit road to score their ninth top 10 of the 2006 season, crossing the finish line in seventh place. The Discount Tire team is now ninth in the NASCAR Busch Series championship owner standings.

“We got out of here a lot better than I thought we would, I just couldn’t put any wheel in the car earlier in the run,” Sorenson commented. “The Discount Tire Dodge favored the longer runs but there weren’t a whole lot of those out there today. The pit crew did a really good job and we figured out what lines were going to work and not work on the track to get out of here with this top 10. Wish we could’ve gotten a top five, but seventh place is good.”

The Discount Tire Dodge was a solid, top-10 car all weekend at Michigan, averaging the ninth-fastest speed in both practice sessions on Friday at the two-mile oval. Early Saturday afternoon, an extremely loose race car derailed the team’s qualifying effort, but Sorenson and team knew their car was better in race trim and thus looked optimistically to their competition run later that day.

It was green-flag racing just before 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday. By lap 11, Sorenson took his top-35 starting spot and turned it into a top-25 run. He told his team the car was still really loose, but the mishandling didn’t seem to interfere too much with his charge forward.

Crew chief Brian Pattie decided to take advantage of the first yellow flag of the day on lap 12, pitting for four tires and fuel, along with wedge and air pressure adjustments to try to tighten up the No. 41 Dodge.

The third yellow flag of the race followed just a little more than 10 laps later and landed the No. 41 Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates (CGRFS) Dodge in first place. Racing resumed on lap 28 with Sorenson leading the way and his teammate Casey Mears running right behind him in second.

Another yellow flag waved on lap 36, and was a welcomed site by the No. 41 CGRFS team. Sorenson was still looking for a little tighter-handling race car so the team went to work again, making another air pressure and wedge adjustment along with four tires and fuel. Other teams opted to not pit or to take two tires only, which initially landed Sorenson in 19th place after his visit to pit road. However, it didn’t take long for him to climb back inside the top 10 as he moved into 10th place on lap 71.

The No. 41 Discount Tire Dodge took the lead once gain on lap 80. From there, the team utilized one more yellow-flag period to make its final adjustments to the No. 41 race car. Racing resumed on lap 106 with Sorenson in 14th

place. Less than five laps later, he was a top-10 contender again and proceeded to hold his stance the remaining 15 laps to finish seventh in the 25th NASCAR Busch Series race of the 2006 season.

The Discount Tire team is now ninth in the NASCAR Busch Series owner standings with a total of 2,723 points. Sorenson moved up one position, to 11th, with a total of 2,638. He is just 46 points outside the top 10 in the driver standings.

The Busch Series teams head to Bristol Motor Speedway next Friday to race under the lights on August 25 in the Food City 250. The race is scheduled to start at 7:50 p.m. ET and will broadcast live on TNT (TV) and PRN (Radio).