Labonte Leaves the Lone Star State with 24th-Place Finish

Justin Labonte

JUSTIN, TEXAS (November 5, 2005) – Despite high hopes for the their race in The Lone Star state, Justin Labonte and the U.S. Coast Guard team finished 24th in the O’Reilly Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway. The Top-25 finish moving them up one spot in owner points to 22nd.

The Corpus Christie, Texas native began the day in the 33rd starting position, not quite the qualifying effort they had hoped for, but the team has come from the back before to garner a Top-Ten finish, so they were confident they could do it again. The car started off the day tight in the center and off the turns and crew chief Harold Holly called for an air pressure and minor chassis adjustment to try and get the No. 44 Chevrolet Monte Carlo in tune. The team made it to Lap 63 before going a lap down to the leaders; unfortunately they were unable to get it back throughout the course of the 200-Lap event. Even though they did not get the finish they had hoped for, they put themselves in contention to finish off the year in 20th in points with only two events left in the season.

“We started the race off a little bit on the set-up,” said Labonte. “Went a lap down and never got it back. Near the middle of the race the car started to come around, but we just couldn’t pass people all that well. Good thing is we didn’t wreck it and we are taking home the car in one piece. We did move up in points, and hopefully if we can get a few good finishes here at Phoenix and Homestead we can finish off the year 20th in owner points. That would be good for this team. They have worked so hard this season, and we are going to fight really hard here at the end to get a Top-Five finish before the end of the season. I like Phoenix; it’s a good track for me so maybe it’ll happen next weekend.”

“We were tight from the start,” said Holly. “We had a good car as far as that goes, we just didn’t have the track position that we needed. We were able to gain a few spots on pit-road, but we just stayed a little too aero tight for the whole race and that hurt us performance wise. We aren’t going to let this finish get us down, we still have two more races of the season and we are going to go out there and show them all that we have to offer. Hopefully we’ll get that Top-Five finish and move up to 20th in points.”

With only two more races on the calendar for the 2005 NASCAR Busch Series season, the No. 44 U.S. Coast Guard team will try and conquer the west as they travel to Phoenix, Arizona next weekend. The Phoenix 200 can be seen on TNT networks at 3:30 PM ET and heard on MRN and XM Satellite Radio.