Broken Fuel Pump Stalls Yeleys bid for 15th

For the first 160 laps of Saturday afternoon's Yellow Transportation 300 NASCAR Busch Series race at the Kansas Speedway, J.J. Yeley and his Miccosukee Gaming & Resort/Northeastern Supply team were looking good.

Yeley, who missed last week's race at Dover, DE due to a bad back and a bout with food poisoning, returned healthy this week and had used some pit stop strategy and his methodical driving style to climb into the top tier of race cars with 70 laps remaining.

Yeley, who started well back in the field in the 34th position, had battled his way into the top 20 by lap 115 when on a pit stop during a caution his crew elected to go with a gas only stop and sent the #1 Chevrolet back out onto the race track in third place when the race re-started with 73 laps remaining.

With the lead lap cars that elected to change tires during their pit stops passing Yeley's machine from the drop of the green flag, J.J. still found himself in a reasonably good position in 12th place when the race was again yellow flagged for debris on lap 136.

Yeley continued to remain on the track and again not pit. He was in 15th with just 60 laps left when the race resumed, but 17 laps later another caution flag flew and this time Yeley came down pit road for what was to be a routine pit stop, and his last of the race, for tires and gas when the problem arose.

"That's the second time in the last few races where a fuel pump has fouled. And that doesn't happen too often," Yeley said. "It's a shame to have to lose such a good opportunity to something like a fuel pump," he added. Yeley suffered the same problem at the Bristol race in late August.

Yeley and his team lost 10 laps making the repairs, showing in the 34th position with less than 30 laps of racing to go and was only able to pick up one spot the rest of the way to be credited with a far better than it appears 33rd place finish.

"Everyone stayed with it today, and even though we didn't have the car capable of racing the better cars, we did have a top 15 finish in our grasp. It's frustrating the way things worked out, but it certainly didn't come because of a lack of effort," Yeley commented.

"Racing is like that. You can be running at the top of your game one lap and then suck wind the next. It can be humbling at times but you continue to work hard and good things usually come out of it. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way for us today," he ended.

Kyle Busch rallied past the race's most dominant car and driver, Matt Kenseth, late in the race to earn the victory with Kenseth, Casey Mears, Kansas native Clint Bowyer and Jamie McMurray rounding out the top five finishers.

Point leader Carl Edwards, who leads the rest of the field of drivers in the hunt for the championship by more than 600 points, had mechanical problems and then crashed out to finish 38th. The 29 car driven by Jeff Burton finished 8th, giving Burton's Richard Childress Racing team the lead in the owner's points championship battle over Edwards' Roush-Fenway Racing team with just five races left.

The Busch Series takes next weekend off before returning to action on Friday night, October 12th, with the running of the Dollar General 300 at the Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte. That race is set to get the green flag at 8 p.m. and will be televised to the nation by ESPN2.