DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - In any sport - and in life - there are good days and bad days.
For driver Mark Green and ML Motorsports, Friday was a little bit of both, as Green finished 30th in the Winn-Dixie 250 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway."It just wouldn't handle, and it was all over the track going through the bumps," said Green, who has made 10 starts in the Nationwide Series this season for the Warsaw-based stock car team. "I guess you can't bring a good car from Talladega down here to Daytona and expect it to run good. They're totally different tracks. Daytona is a lot rougher and it has no grip. We just couldn't get it to handle today."
And for Green and ML Motorsports, the two tracks produced totally different results.
Because Green drove the Mary Louise Miller and Stephany Mullen-owned No. 70 Chevy to a fifth-place finish in the spring race at Talladega, there was a lot of excitement heading into the race at Daytona.
"I thought we'd run good here because we ran good at Talladega," said Green, who had posted three top-15 finishes in his previous five starts. "We didn't run that well, but we brought the car home in one piece, that's a plus. That's better than we did in February."
While Green and the team were disappointed in their 30th-place finish, they were pleased to finish the race and not have to make major repairs to their superspeedway car.
In the season opener, Green was caught up in a multi-car accident in practice and in the race, leaving he and ML Motorsports with a 41st-place finish.
The season opener is Green's only DNF this season, and the two Daytona races account for the team's worst two finishes.
Other than the famed high-banked 2.5-mile track in Florida, Green and ML Motorsports have finished 28th or better, including the top-5 at Talladega, a 13th-place effort at The Milwaukee Mile and a 14th-place finish at Nashville Superspeedway.
"Talladega doesn't have the bumps this place does, and it has a lot more grip," said crew chief Brian Ross. "I don't know if we missed on the body or what. I can't believe we were that far off. Maybe we need to get a new body on it and see what happens. This is one of them deals where you have to take the good with the bad. We finished 30th, but we brought the car home in one piece. We'll just go to Chicagoland now and see what happens there. Our intermediate stuff has been getting better, we'll go there and see what we can do."
The team will be in action again Friday night in the Dollar General 300 at Chicagoland Speedway.
Denny Hamlin won Friday night's race at Daytona, followed by fellow Nextel Cup starts Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Clint Bowyer. Brad Keselowski rounded out the top five.
Kasey Kahn finished sixth, while Scott Wimmer, David Stremme, David Ragan and Mike Bliss rounded out the top 10.
