David Stremme, No. 40 Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon Race Advance
Pennsylvania 500 - Pocono Raceway
No. 40 TEAM FACTS:
Appearances: Stremme will be appearing at the Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon this Thursday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He will be signing autographs and meeting with fans from 7-9 p.m. EST.
Chassis: Crew Chief Steve Lane and the No. 40 Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon crew are taking chassis No. 309 for the event this weekend. Stremme wheeled this car earlier this season at Pocono bringing home a 26th-place finish.
Walking Around the Track: This Friday after qualifying, Stremme will join Ernie Irvan and other NASCAR drivers to walk around Pocono Raceway in support of Irvan’s LAPS Walk charity event. The event allows participants to pay an entry fee to get the opportunity to walk with several NASCAR drivers as they make laps on foot to raise awareness and fund Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) prevention and treatment. For more information, please visit www.biausa.org.
Pocono Stats: This will only be Stremme’s second time racing at Pocono Raceway in the NEXTEL Cup Series. Earlier this season, he brought home a 26th-place finish after handling issues and pit strategies shuffled him back through the pack.
Rookie Ranks: Stremme is currently sixth in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings. With 126 points, he is 82 points behind leader Denny Hamlin and only 23 points behind fifth place J.J. Yeley.
NASCAR NEXTEL Cup points standings: Stremme is currently 35th in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup driver standings. He is 355 points out of the top 25. The No. 40 Dodge is currently 36th in the owner standings, just 13 points out of 35th. There are now 17 races remaining in the 2006 season.
David Stremme Quotes:
Things seem to be really looking up for the team, what’s behind the major upswing?
“By no means has our first half of the year been what we expected. There have been a lot of changes with the crew chief and building new cars and all kinds of stuff. We’ve been through a restructuring stage the first part of the year and have actually been running better. We’re still not where we need to be but the one thing is that it’s a time process. It’s not going to change overnight. We go to some of these places and we look forward to going back to them because our year started out so horrible and we feel that we could have had better results at many of these tracks.”
Hamlin said the video game helped him at Pocono-what are your thoughts?
“You can play video games all you want but you have to have a good team behind you and good equipment. Denny commented on that at Pocono, too, where his crew chief and him were able to sit down and talk about it. From my side of it, when I came on board with Ganassi I was outsourced to Busch teams. Now, I am in-house and learning all kinds of new stuff all of the time. So, the video game probably helps but you’ve got to have a good team around you as well.”
