Darnell Scores Third Consecutive Top-10 Finish Friday Night At OPR

Courtesy Rory Connellan

CLERMONT, IN –­ Erik Darnell and the No. 99 FinishMaster team gambled with their pit strategy Friday night at O’Reilly Raceway Park and it paid off with a top-10 finish. Darnell stayed out while most teams pitted on lap 126 to gain valuable track position and held off many teams with fresh tires to remain in the top 10.

Darnell started the race from 13th place. He told the team early in the race the truck was tight in the center which also made it loose off the corners. He was in 14th place by lap 40 and moved back up to 13th by lap 54. The team made their first pit stop on lap 60 for new tires, fuel, track bar and air pressure adjustments. He returned to the track in 19th place since some teams did not pit.

The race resumed on lap 63 and Darnell began to work his way through traffic. He was up to 16th place by lap 79. The truck was still tight in the center and loose off. By the halfway point at lap 100 he had fallen back to 19th, but gained a few more spots again before the next caution on lap 126.

Darnell was in 17th when the caution came out on lap 126. Although the handling of the truck was not what they wanted, crew chief John Quinn made the call for Darnell to stay out and gain track position. They believed it would be easier to try to stay up front, rather than have to pass several trucks to get there.

The race restarted on lap 134 with Darnell in second place. He was able to maintain fourth place for the next 10 laps and fell to sixth place with 50 laps to go. The truck was still tight through the center, but Darnell was determined to hold his track position for as long as he could. He had fallen back to 11th with 33 laps to go, but a few laps later moved into ninth when two trucks ahead of him wrecked to bring out the caution on lap 168.

Darnell was ninth on lap 172. He was passed by his Roush teammate David Ragan on lap 177 and remained in 10th place for the rest of the race. Darnell’s 10th-place finish was his sixth top 10 of the season and he also claimed the Raybestos Rookie of the Race award.

“Especially with the way we ran at Memphis, I figured we'd have a real good truck here,” Darnell said. “It was the same truck that we had at Memphis, but our FinishMaster Ford F-150 wasn't that great tonight. We were decent on a long run, but we couldn't run with the guys up front; they were fast. We made a gamble there to pit early and stay out and keep the track position because we knew we wouldn't be able to keep up with those guys on fresh tires. It was going be harder to pass all of them than to hold them off. That's what we did and we ended up with a top 10. It wasn't great, but we'll take it and go to Nashville.”