Braun Secures Best Finish of Season at Gateway

Madison, Ill (July 17, 2010) – Colin Braun secured his highest finish of the season after his highest qualifying effort of the season at Gateway International Raceway.  Braun started the Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 from the second spot, just missing the pole by five hundreths of a second, and ran in the top-10 the entire evening.  After surviving a few late race cautions and a short red-flag period, Braun was collected in a last lap wreck on the front stretch, but not before crossing the finish line in seventh.  It was Braun’s highest finish of the season and third top-10 of 2010.

At the start of the race, Braun dropped back a bit, saying his car was a little free.  He still maintained position in the top-five.  By the first caution on lap 45, Braun was scored fourth and brought his Con-way Freight Ford to pit road for some adjustments and fresh tires.  He restarted in sixth.  Braun continued to run in the top-10 through green flag pit stops on lap 119.  He still complained about the handling of the car, but both he and crew chief Rick Viers didn’t want to make too drastic a change for fear of overshooting the problem. 

With 50 laps to go, the racing began to get dicey.  Braun took his car three-wide on the front stretch for position, but quickly thought better of it before entering turn one.  After going nearly 150 laps with only one caution, the yellow flags started to be shown with more regularity.  Under a lap 179 caution period, Viers made a last second decision to bring his rookie down pit road for a two-tire stop.  Because some competitors remained on track, Braun restarted in 12th on lap 183, the only time he dropped outside the top-10 all evening. 

 The field would see two more caution periods before the checkered flag, one including a short time under the red flag for clean-up from an incident.  On the final restart, Braun was scored in seventh where he took the white flag.  Leader and teammate Carl Edwards made contact with Brad Keselowski coming to the checkers on the front stretch and Braun was tagged in the aftermath of that contact by Keselowski, but not before crossing the stripe in seventh. 

“We just had an awesome car all weekend,” Braun said after the race.  “I hate that it got torn up a little there at the end, but I’m so proud of this team and Rick for a great night.  I definitely think we are turning the corner here and there really are more good things to come from this team in the next few weeks.  I’m really excited to get to ORP next week to build on this finish.  It’s a place I’ve done very well at in the past.”

Roush Fenway teammate Carl Edwards won his second race of the season.  Reed Sorensen, Trevor Bayne, Paul Menard and Steven Wallace rounded out the top-five.  All four Roush Fenway Racing Fords finished in the top-10 with fellow rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finishing ninth.  Braun remains third in the rookie of the year standings.  The Nationwide Series travels to O’Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis, Ind. next week where Braun will be back behind the wheel of the No. 16 Con-way Freight Ford.

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