Casey Mears and No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge
Sylvania 300 – New Hampshire International Speedway Advance
Texaco/Havoline Team Facts:
Standings: Casey Mears and the Texaco/Havoline team remain 15th in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup standings following their 11th-place finish on Saturday night in Richmond. The run was a career best at Richmond for Mears. Mears and the team sit just 13 points out of 14th place. At this point last season Mears was 25th heading to New Hampshire International Speedway (NHIS), an improvement of 10 positions.
Running at Loudon: Mears is looking for his first top-10 finish at New Hampshire International Speedway this weekend. He has seven starts at the 1-mile track huddled in the northeast. Crew chief Donnie Wingo and the Texaco/Havoline team had a strategy set for a top-15 finish at NHIS, but caution flags and fuel mileage had other plans for the team. Mears and the crew settled for a 21st-place finish in a race scheduled to end at lap 300, but ran to 308. His best finish at Loudon is16th.
Mears… the closer: According to NASCAR statistics for the 2006 NEXTEL Cup season, Mears ranks #1 on the closer list (positions improved over the last 10 percent of each race). Mears has improved a total of 58 positions in the Texaco/Havoline Dodge, an average of 2.231 spots, over the first 26 races of the season in the closing laps. In total, Mears has made 2093 green-flag passes to date.
Chassis: Crew chief Donnie Wingo and the Texaco/Havoline team are returning to the track with chassis #616 for this weekend’s Sylvania 300. Mears ran this chassis last weekend at Richmond where he drove it to an 11th-place finish. This chassis was a new short track car developed at CGRFS and first ran at Loudon in July.
New Hampshire Natives: Two members of the Texaco/Havoline team will be very close to their hometowns while racing at New Hampshire International Speedway this weekend. The No. 42 Texaco/Havoline car chief Mike Brill is a Woodsville, N.H., native and Norwalk, Conn., is the hometown of Mike Bodick who serves as a mechanic and the team’s gas man on race day.
Casey Mears Quotes:
“I feel better about going back to Loudon. We didn’t run that well in New Hampshire with our new short track car, but Reed (Sorenson) and the 41 team ran great. Last weekend at Richmond our short track car from Loudon ran pretty good and we were able to adjust on it and get better during the practice sessions and the race. I’m much more confident in our short track program and have a lot of confidence in this team heading back to Loudon. Hopefully we can put together a top-10 finish this weekend, keep the car in one piece and prepare it for Martinsville.”
