Ruby Tuesday Team Claims No. 8 Spot At Daytona
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Jul 04, 2008
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Ruby Tuesday Championship Racing Team drivers Bill Auberlen and Joey Hand turned in a eight place effort in Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series Brumos Porsche 250 at Daytona International Speedway.
Auberlen started seventh in the No. 23 Ruby Tuesday Championship Racing Team Porsche-powered Crawford and immediately dropped four spots in the first two laps. It did not take teams long to start playing the pit stop game. In fact, just eight laps into the 70-lap race, the Ruby Tuesday team had Auberlen make a pit stop to take on fuel and get the mandatory 45-minute pit stop out of the way.
Auberlen was 18th after the pit stop. During his stint, he ran consistent lap times in the 1:44s and had the No. 23 machine up to fourth by the time he made his final pit stop on lap 37. This is when Hand got into the car.
Just one lap into Hand’s stint, the first of four cautions came out. Each time the caution came out and bunched up the field, Hand had to go into defensive driving mode to fend of other Daytona Prototypes. Unfortunately, the No. 23 machine did not have enough performance to fend them off. Hand dropped from fourth to 11th with just 14 laps to go.
Over the next 14 laps, the Ruby Tuesday team benefited from some late race attrition that claimed a couple of the top contending DPs, which ultimately helped the No. 23 machine finish eighth.
“Initially I thought we were going to be O.K.,” Hand said of the start of his 33-lap stint. “I was in P4 after the pit stops cycled through and then we immediately got a yellow. I was able to hold guys off for about two laps and had a pretty decent gap. But, then we got another yellow and we did not have a chance. They were all over me. I really had nothing I could do. I saw this happen to Bill when he was driving the car and it did not look fun. Guys were just driving by him on the outside.
“We did the best we could driving this car through the corners. We were outbraking people. I think we were down on performance in the straightaways. At one point, I got passed by five prototypes at once. But, I was not going to give up because the guys on this Ruby Tuesday team do not give up. I drove it around as hard as I could and that was all I could do.”
“That finish was absolutely terrible,” Auberlen said after the race. “This car is so slow in a straight line that it is painful to watch. We are in people’s way in a straight line. We were in fourth when Joey got in the car. But, when everyone bunched up around him, they just drove by him. The only reason we finished where we did is because the cars in front of us broke. This is no way to go racing. Obviously, we’ve got to make some changes.”
“Both Bill and Joey did an excellent job tonight and our pit stop strategy was flawless,” Team Owner Alex Job said. “At one point, we were running fourth because of that. And, though we had a respectable finish, it was not truly indicative of the car’s true performance. The new Crawford needs a lot of development and it does not make any sense to be testing this car in the middle of the race season!”
