Kobyluck Finishes Third In First Race Of 2006 Season
Matt Kobyluck drove the No. 40 Mohegan Sun Casino Chevrolet to a third place finish in the United Rentals 125 at Phoenix International Raceway Sunday afternoon, and took home some valuable information he hopes will catapult him to a Busch East Series championship this season.
“It was great to come out here and put on a good show,” said the 35-year-old driver. “What was better for us was that we were using this race and a race here in April for R&D for our Loudon race. Phoenix and NHIS are similar in that they are one-mile flat tracks and I really think we had a positive outcome on working on our set-ups for the those (NHIS) races.”
Kobyluck pulled out to third at the drop of the green and worked his way up to second after passing early leader Mike Duncan at lap 17. A caution slowed the pace on lap 22 due to a rolling tire on the backstretch from Austin Cameron’s car.
The #40 Mohegan Sun Chevrolet (NASCAR Photo)
On the restart, Kobyluck dueled with Spencer Clark, but gave the position to him as he turned his focus to the pressures of Ken Schrader. Schrader held a slight advantage over the Mohegan Sun Casino Chevrolet through the corners, but the Uncasville, CT-native fought back and held on to his second position at the line.
Schrader continued to pressure Kobyluck, and on lap 40, the two were running side-by-side in a tight battle that was eventually won by Schrader. Kobyluck slipped back to fourth, but continued to put in a strong performance.
“We were just getting a little free on entry and tight in the middle,” explained Kobyluck. “We needed to get to the point where we could make a pit stop and go the rest of the way. I don’t think tires were that big of an issue. We knew once we put 20 laps on the tires they were going to be the same as before, but we needed the chassis adjustment to fine tune things.”
A caution waved at lap 59 with the leaders taking advantage of it with pit stops. Kobyluck came in and changed right side tires and took on fuel.
“We made one round on the crossbar, but that little adjustment made a big difference. The longer we ran the tighter the other guys got and we just stayed good,” said Kobyluck.
Following the pit stop, Kobyluck was fifth as the race went back to green. Schrader, the first of the lead lap cars that opted to pit and the second place car in the running order, failed to get a good start. The field almost bunched up and Kobyluck fell back to sixth.
On lap 78, Kobyluck turned up the heat and successfully challenged the 61 driven by Brett Thompson for fifth. Several carlengths separated the top-five cars with caution emerging at lap 90 to tighten it back up.
Racing resumed at lap 104 with Kobyluck immediately moving up to fourth and then to third by lap 108. Leader Ken Schrader had pulled away to a considerable advantage, but Kobyluck was determined to try and gain some ground. Time ran out and the Mohegan Sun Casino driver finished third behind Schrader and Eric Holmes.
“On that last restart I was battling with some other guys and the front guys got a pretty good lead on me. We just ran out of time, and we couldn’t really close the gap back up. When we took the checker I was about two carlengths behind.”
