RICHMOND, Va. – They didn’t cross the finish line first, but for Johanna Long and the ML Motorsports team, Friday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series Race was a victory of sorts. After struggling in their previous four races this season, with three of those races ending with badly wrecked cars, Long and the Warsaw-based team qualified 13th and finished 15th in the ToyotaCare 250 at Richmond International Raceway. “We really needed this,” said ML Motorsports Team Manager Tony Barnes. “We qualified in the top 15, finished in the top 15 and brought the car home in one piece. This was a good weekend for us. This is something we can build off of.” In their previous races this season, Long and the team finished 27th at Daytona, 40th at Phoenix, 19th at Las Vegas and 27th at Texas. “We came out of here with a good finish,” said the 20-year-old Long, who was making her 50th career NASCAR start. “The guys work so hard. They work really hard every day to get these cars ready. This is definitely something we can build from, and as a driver, this is really big for my confidence.” Long, who has made 24 starts in the Camping World Truck Series and now 26 starts in the Nationwide Series, and the team now turn their attention to Saturday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway. After posting their best finish of the season, gaining some much-needed momentum, Talladega offers a number of unknowns. Because of the style of racing, where cars are in packs inches from each other at nearly 190 miles per hour, there are generally multi-car crashes at Talladega. Long’s No. 70 car was involved in one of those big crashes in the season-opening race at Daytona. “Talladega is fun,” said ML Motorsports crew chief Mark Gutekunst. “It’s fun until you wreck, and it’s fun if you don’t wreck. We had a good weekend at Richmond. Now we gotta keep this going. We need to go down to Talladega and stay out of trouble and be there at the end.” In the Nationwide Series, the top 30 teams in owner’s points are locked into the 40-car field each week. After their 15th-place finish at Richmond, Long and the ML Motorsports team moved up to 31st in the standings – just two points out of the top 30. “We need to be in the top 30, and we gained some ground this weekend,” said Barnes. “This is definitely something we can build from.”
