Frustrating Xfinity Series race for Gase at Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Joey Gase said after practice on Friday, his Jimmy Means Racing team was guessing in a lot of areas with their No. 52 Chevy. Saturday's NASCAR Xfinity Series Powershares QQQ 300 — and, really, all of Speedweeks — ended up a bad guess.

Gase lacked single-car speed, but could and did stay in the lead draft on Saturday at Daytona International Speedway if he had a car behind him pushing — getting as high as 12th at one point while riding in the pack.

Unfortunately for Gase and Jimmy Means Racing, that didn't last, and he finished 32nd, five laps down to winner Chase Elliott.

'The only way we could stay in the pack was if I had cars behind me. When I had a big run I would go for it, and never leave the middle lane,' Gase said after the race. 'Everyone went to the bottom, so I went down there and that's when we got screwed. If we didn't have anyone behind us pushing, we were in trouble.'

He was fortunate to make the race via a provisional, get new sponsors JT Concrete, TransLife and U-Glove some exposure and avoided both early wrecks en route to a clean finish, but that was about where the positives ended. The car Gase's team brought to Daytona was new to Jimmy Means Racing, but was a repurposed Cup car from several years ago.

div class="left">

Gase said using those older chassis is a bit like roulette. Sometimes they work out great, other times not.

Saturday, it was the latter.

The lack of speed, in part, was attributed to Gase's car bottoming out on the racing surface, creating immense drag when he was at speed. His team had no way to precisely test the ride heights that prevent something like that from happening, due to their fewer resources than the top teams in the Xfinity Series.

'It's just one of those things where we weren't able to take the car to the pull-down (rig) over the winter and stuff like that. When were able to go faster and travel (the car at speed), the sway bar arms would drag,' Gase said. 'You just can't drag the chassis like we were. An old Cup car, the way they travel is a little bit different. The problem is, the sway-bar arms were hitting before the splitter, which is never good. If you're going to bottom out, it should be the splitter way before it gets to the sway-bar arms. We learned with this car we never had before, so we'll have to see what we can do to fix it.'

Gase's frustration could be heard over the radio throughout the race, and after he couldn't pinpoint everything that needed to be fixed.

Whatever happens for Talladega, the only thing Gase was certain of after the race at Daytona was that what his No. 52 was at Daytona can't be what it will be in a few months. There's no real way, he said, to totally wash away the frustration of a day like Saturday, but there's also no reason to dwell on it.

He and Jimmy Means Racing will try to regroup for next week at Atlanta.

'There was a whole bunch of stuff. Hopefully we'll bring a different car back to Talladega, or do a lot of work on this one,' Gase said. 'The positive thing is we made the race and finished the race. That'll help us to start the year out, points-wise. We'll just have to go from there.

'There's not really much you can do. You just improve for the next one.'

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com