August 15, 2006

Short Day for East in Nashville

Bobby East qualified the Wood/jtg Racing No. 21 Edy's Dibs Ford an impressive ninth to start the day, but an early race accident left him a disappointing 36th-place finish in the Toyota Tundra 200 at Nashville Superspeedway.

In qualifying, East picked up his third top-10 start of the season, and looked to have a truck that could compete for a top-10 finish.  But trouble struck early, as another driver nudged him at the end of the backstretch sending East backwards into the turn three wall on lap 4.  The damage to East's Ford was too severe to be repaired and he retired from the event.

On the start, East was trapped in the outside groove on the tricky 1.33-mile concrete tri-oval.  Biding his time, East looked for a hole to open in traffic to allow him back in the preferred line.  As another competitor went past East heading into the third turn, contact was made and East's day came to an abrupt end.

"We got ran into on Lap 4," East said. "That's the breaks we've been having. It's real bad for the guys on the team. They do such a great job. We had a good truck. We qualified good, we were running good in the race, then we got caught up in a deal like that. It's not really bad luck; sometimes things don't go your way. We've got to keep doing what we're doing. We're doing everything right. I'm getting really fast trucks. We need to stay focused on our plan."

Next up for East and the No. 21 Edy's Dibs/State Fair Corn Dogs Ford is the O'Reilly 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway on Wednesday August 23rd.  The one-day event will have practice, qualifying, and the race all on the same day, with SPEED televising the 200-lap contest live starting at 8:30 P.M. Eastern.  MRN Radio will have the call on selected radio affiliates nationwide, and TruckSeries.com will have complete event coverage online at www.truckseries.com.