Regan Smith said that his JR Motorsports team had to be great at Kansas Speedway this weekend to continue to stay in the hunt for the NASCAR Nationwide Series championship.
But, his team was anything but, after Smith encountered problems before and during the Kansas Lottery 300.
Smith, driving a pink-themed No. 7 Hunt Brothers Pizza Chevrolet Camaro lost his primary car in round two of qualifying Saturday morning. After barely getting the back-up car together, Smith methodically worked his way from the rear of the field, finding a safety cushion inside the top-20, but found trouble inside the final 60 laps of the race.
While green flag pit stops had nearly ended, the right front sway bar arm broke underneath the No. 7 Chevrolet Camaro, forcing Smith to pit road for repairs.
“It went from bad to worse to a disaster, so sorry about that,” said crew chief Ryan Pemberton in the closing laps of the race.
Diligently, the JR Motorsports team was able to make repairs on pit road, instead of the garage, but his finish would suffer as the four-time Nationwide Series winner was credited with a 22nd-place finish and fell further behind teammate Chase Elliott for the championship title.
“Any time you have to roll a backup car out two hours before a race, you have to expect anything to happen,” Smith said. “My guys did a great job of getting the car ready to where we could get to the grid with it, much less be competitive for the first stage of the race.
“We fought with it. It’s kind of what we anticipated for the day and at this point – obviously disappointed, it’s been a long year. But appreciate Hunt Brothers being on the car and we’re going to keep going and get as many Nationwide points as we can.”
While Saturday’s result was painful, the team isn’t completely out of the picture. 38 points now separate Smith from his rookie competitor, but with four races left, it’s likely that Elliott, who’s been seemingly bulletproof will have to have some type of issue in order to bring the championship battle back to the drama peg.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
