Yeley Races to His Best Finish in 2007

Phoenix Racing decided to evaluate its engine program recently, and one of the moves was to "test" a Joe Gibbs Racing engine in NASCAR Busch Series competition. It paid off for driver J.J. Yeley and his Miccosukee Gaming & Resort/Northeastern Supply Chevrolet team Saturday afternoon at Chicagoland Speedway as Yeley rallied late to post an 11th place finish - his best of the 2007 season to date.

Starting 27th after a so-so qualifying effort, Yeley asserted himself from the very start of the 200-lap, 300-mile event around Chicagoland Speedway's wide, 1.5-mile D-shaped oval, improving three positions in the first three laps.

Yeley drove his #1 Chevrolet into the top 20 by lap 30 and never ran worse than 20th over the remaining 170 circuits; getting to as high as 11th just before the halfway mark during a re-start on lap 98 following one of the event's nine caution periods.

Yeley did fall back to as far as the 15th spot with 25 laps to go but quickly got by three cars in just seven laps to move into 12th with 18 to go. That is when current Series' points leader Carl Edwards was penalized for a pit road infraction and was forced to go down pit road for a stop and go penalty under green flag racing conditions while running seventh, dropping him two laps down to the field and en route to his worst finish of the 2007 season - 20th.

That moved Yeley up a spot to 11th that he was successful in retaining the remainder of the race.

"There's no doubt that having that Joe Gibbs Racing engine to race with today helped," said Yeley, who is accustomed to driving with the JGR power plants since he drives the #18 Interstate Batteries Chevrolet for Gibbs on the Nextel Cup circuit.

"This team has been evaluating its overall performance to date, and one of the concerns was having enough power to contend in these races. Though we didn't really challenge for a win today, at least we had the power that allowed me to move through the field without much fuss and pick off some cars late in the race to score my best finish of the year for Phoenix Racing.

"I hope the evaluation finds some more things that we can do to compete at a higher level than we've shown so far this year," said Yeley, who improved two spots in the driver's championship points standing to 15th with his top 15 effort.

Defending Busch Series champion Kevin Harvick held off a fast closing Matt Kenseth to top the victory with Jeff Burton, Clint Bowyer and Kyle Busch, all Nextel Cup Series regulars, rounding out the top five finishers.

Despite his disappointing finish, Edwards is still very comfortably ahead of second place Harvick in the current point standings after 20 of 35 races with 3,074 - a whopping 716 better than the 2006 Busch Series title winner.

The Busch Series moves to the Gateway International Speedway in Madison, IL, just across the river from St. Louis, for an 8 p.m. run on Saturday night. ESPN2 will again televise the race live to the nation.