04.19
DAWSONVILLE, Ga. (April 19, 2010) – Casey Roderick gave his Team Monolith Ford quite a run in Saturday’s Monolith Companies 100 at Gresham Motorsports Park, but his run toward to the front ended prematurely when he tangled with T.J. Reaid during a hard battle for the runner-up spot.
Roderick’s Ford was fastest in qualifying at the Jefferson, Ga., track, but his luck in the draw for the starting order wasn’t so good. He drew a six, which put him back in sixth place for the start while his teammate Chase Elliott inherited the pole.
After just 16 laps, Roderick had moved into the top five with a pass of Hunter Robbins, and almost immediately took fourth place from Dwayne Buggay.
By the time the green flag flew following a caution period at Lap 34, Roderick was in thid and challenging Reaid for the runner-up spot as the top four drivers ran within 1.3 seconds of each other.
After a red-flag period for clean up following a crash by Buggay, the green flag was waved with 43 laps remaining. Roderick restarted on the outside of teammate and leader Chase Elliott. The largest Gresham crowd of 2010 was treated to a battle among Bill Elliott Racing teammates as Roderick challenged Elliott for the lead, with the duo racing side-by-side coming off of Turn Four. Elliott maintained the lead, while Roderick had a mirror full of Reaid.
Reaid just missed getting into Roderick coming off of Turn Four and took the second position at the flag, but Roderick battled back and pulled up to the door of Reaid the very next lap.
Roderick slid the nose of his Monolith Fusion, and the two cars made contact, with both Reaid and Roderick spinning down the frontstretch, bringing both of their nights to an abrupt end.
“When I got into T.J., my car just bottomed out and washed up the track and went sideways,” Roderick said. “When I tried to correct it, I turned into T.J., and we ended up in the wall.
“It was just hard racing for second. I think we had a pretty decent car though.”
Roderick’s next event will be a Super Late Model track event at Gresham Motorsports Park on May 15.
Casey was racing a little too hard with so many laps left. To bad he took out two good cars. Maybe he should be a little more patient. I would like to have seen how it would have turned out if this hadn’t happened.