Hamilton Rises to Seventh in Busch Series Point's Race

A little home cooking for McDonald’s driver Bobby Hamilton left the Tennessee native in seventh place in the NASCAR Busch Series Point’s race.  For the second time this 2007 season, the Busch Series came to Bobby’s home track, The Nashville Superspeedway for a 300 mile race.  When the checkered flag waved across the field, Hamilton had moved forward to seventh in the point’s race with a 13th place finish.

Friday afternoon brought two practice sessions and Hamilton proceeded to record some of the fastest laps of the sessions.  The McDonald’s Ford was working well and the team believed they could contend for a win on Saturday.

On Saturday, Hamilton qualified his No. 35 Ford in the 8th position, just hours before the race was scheduled to begin.  When the action started, Hamilton began to charge forward.  A long green flag run allowed Hamilton to move inside the top-five before the first pit stop of the day.

Unfortunately, the team had trouble changing the front tires and dropped to 15th following the pit stop.  For the remainder of the race, crew chief Chris Wright was forced to make pit stop decision to regain the lost positions.  Wright tried two tire pit stops and was successful in placing Hamilton back inside the top five.  The older tires eventually wore out and Hamilton dropped back to 13th at the end of the race.

“We put ourselves in a bad position on the first pit stop, and that kept us from finishing where we should have,” Hamilton said.  The McDonald’s Ford was fast tonight, a top five car, we just hurt ourselves.  We will move forward and go to Kentucky with an eye on winning next Saturday night.”

To no ones surprise, Carl Edwards won the Busch Series race. The Cup Series driver took the lead with over 50 laps to go and drove away to an easy win over fellow Cup driver Clint Bowyer.

Next Saturday night, Hamilton will return to Kentucky Speedway where he will go for his second win at the 1.5 mile track.  Check your local listings for broadcast times in the area.