Atwood, Kleenex Ford Wrap-Up 2006 with 21st Place Finish

Casey Atwood

Homestead, FL (November 20, 2006) – For the second week in a row Casey Atwood had a strong qualifying run with the No. 27 KLEENEX®/VIVA® Ornaments on Parade Ford Fusion which led to a solid 21st place finish Saturday night in the final race of the 2006 season: the Ford 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Atwood qualified in the 12th position to start the race. Immediately he reported loose conditions to Crew Chief Stewart Cooper. After staying out on the track in order to lead a lap, Atwood pitted under the first caution on lap 50 for four tires with air pressure adjustments and fuel. He indicated that more changes were needed to adjust the car and address the loose condition. Cooper led the No. 27 KLEENEX®/VIVA® Ornaments on Parade Ford down pit road twice more to put wedge in the car and to work on the car’s entry into the corners. On lap 91 Atwood was in the 22nd position and had just gone a lap down, while the team struggled to determine what was going on with the car. After a pit stop on lap 139, they figured out what was wrong.

“During the long green flag run in the middle of the race we had two tires going down,” Cooper told his driver over the radio during the race. Tire Specialist Billy Chandler talked with Goodyear officials about the problem and the other members of the No. 27 KLEENEX®/VIVA® team kept working on the car. The team avoided the cautions late in the race to end in the 21st position.

The No. 27 Brewco team struggled with the setup of the tires in several races in 2006, but Crew Chief Cooper was adamant that it wouldn’t affect the Kleenex Racing team in 2007.

“This won’t happen to us next year,” he told his Brewco crew over the radio at the end of the Ford 300. “We’ll work extra hard this winter and we won’t have this trouble again.”

Atwood wrapped up the 2006 season for the Brewco/Kleenex® team with four finishes of 18th or better over eight starts. He started races in the top-ten twice (Dover, Phoenix).

“All in all I thought it was a good end of the year for us, but I know we’re capable of better,” he said. “We really wanted to get our Kleenex Ford in Victory Lane here at the end of 2006, but while we weren’t able to do that, we did make a lot of progress and learned what work needs to be done in the off-season.”

“It will be a busy off-season for the whole Kleenex Racing® team,” Cooper said. “We’re already working on our superspeedway cars and getting ready for testing in Daytona in January. We know we have to rebound from this year and we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen. We’re looking forward to a successful 2007 for Brewco and for our friends at Kimberly-Clark.”