Veteran Hornaday Takes Alan Kulwicki 250
Veteran Ron Hornaday fought off young guns David Stremme and Shane Hmiel to win Saturday night’s NASCAR Busch Series Alan Kulwicki 250 at the Milwaukee Mile.
Hornaday battled back from a lap down and took the lead from Hmiel with six laps to go to score his fourth career Busch win. Hornaday drove his Richard Childress Racing AC Delco Chevrolet to his first win since scoring a victory at Nazareth 38 races ago.
“Those kids (Stremme and Hmiel) were running their guts out and I thought I could catch them, but (my crew chief) Butch Hylton said to just save your stuff and sure enough the more I saved it the more I rolled up into the middle of the corner and gave them more pressure to start racing each other harder and that?s when they started to loosen each other up and start spinning their tires,” said Hornaday. “In the end it gave us fresher tires.”
Polesitter Stremme looked to be on his way to his first career win when he got loose in turn four while leading on lap 220. The slide dropped him back to fourth before he was able to rally for the runnerup finish.
“I gave that race away,” a dejected Stremme reasoned. “We freed the car up a bit and I was just riding around in first, probably running too hard, and I slid the car off the corner and got up in the marbles. I guess you have to give them away before you can finally win one, but I?m confident we can still pull off a victory this year.”
Jason Keller finished third, after running over Hmiel on the final turn. Hmiel, who led a race-high 95 laps, wound up fourth with Bobby Hamilton, Jr. rounding out the Top 5.
Mike Bliss, Greg Biffle, David Green, Martin Truex, Jr., and Clint Bowyer completed the first ten finishers.
Source: Racing One
