A bit of bad timing -allied to a strange turn of events - potentially cost Ron Fellows and the DLP HDTV team victory in the Toyota/SaveMart 350k Nextel Cup Series race at the Infineon Raceway road course at the weekend, the Canadian going on to finish a disappointed 15th.
Road course ace Fellows, driving in place of Hall of Fame Racing regular Tony Raines, started eleventh, moved up to tenth when the second caution came out on lap nine and then pitted for four tyres, fuel and a chassis adjustment. The pit-stop moved the DLP team back to 31st, but it was no cause for concern since every team seemed to use a different strategy on the ten-turn, 1.99-mile road course.
Fellows was back up to 18th by lap 31 and, as other teams began to make their pit-stops according to fuel strategy, was soon into the top three. By lap 41, he was leading. However, just as he was about to pit for the second time two laps later, NASCAR officials called a caution for debris, scotching any hope of a landmark victory.
We were running in the top five and then led a little bit, Fellows said, Then, as is my luck, the lap that we were going to pit, it went yellow. We pitted and went all the way back to 38th because there was debris in turn ten and apparently on the front straight too. I saw what was in ten and I should have pitted - that's a call that a driver sometimes has to make and I should have just dove into the pits. The DLP guys had a decent strategy and a good plan, but we never really recovered from that.
