LATE-RACE INCIDENT FOILS LEFFLER’S TOP 5 BID IN RICHMOND; BUT 10TH PLACE FINISH STILL MOVES HIM INTO 3RD IN DRIVER POINTS

Jason Leffler continued his streak of top ten finishes with a 10th place effort Friday night in the Lipton Tea 250 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at the ¾-mile, Richmond International Raceway. Jason, though, had something far bigger in mind – a top five finish.

The driver of the #38 Great Clips/Dollar General/Northeastern Supply Toyota Camry was riding fifth with less than 20 laps remaining when a side-by-side battle with Brad Keselowski ended Leffler’s top five bid.

Driving a Chevrolet owned by Dale Earnhardt, Jr’s JR Motorsports Team, Keselowski had stormed back from the rear of the field with fresher tires to challenge Leffler for the fifth position after passing a host of cars. Keselowski drove his machine hard inside Leffler’s in an attempt to make the pass coming off of the second turn and in the process tapped the left rear quarter panel of the Great Clips Toyota.

Leffler’s machine got out of shape, grazed the outside retaining wall on the backstretch and forced several cars behind to begin spinning causing a multi-car accident that brought out a caution flag. Leffler’s Toyota barely escaped with some right front and right rear fender damage while the cars of teammate Brian Scott and Richard Childress Racing’s Jeff Burton were damaged too severely in the subsequent incident to continue.

Leffler was forced to bring his car down pit road for repairs, moving him to the tenth position and now the last car on the lead lap. It was where he would be forced to finish since he simply nursed his car the remaining laps in order to just finish out the event.

“I had a top five car tonight, but the car got a little tight after we made our final stop for tires and I did everything I could to hold onto the fifth spot until Keselowski made his move. Not getting another top five finish is a bummer, but at least we finished on the lead lap for the ninth straight time and actually moved up a spot in the point standings,” Leffler explained after the race.

With David Ragan, last week’s winner at Talladega, not racing this week, Leffler was able to leapfrog the Roush Racing veteran in the Championship Driver’s Point Standing. Jason is now third, the highest he has been in the point race since finishing the 2007 campaign in the same slot. He trails leader Kyle Busch, the winner at Richmond in dominating fashion, by 198 points entering next Friday night’s race at the famed Darlington Raceway in Darlington, SC. That race is scheduled to begin coverage on ESPN2 TV at 7 p.m. EDT.

Leffler knew he had a strong car for the Richmond test after qualifying a solid ninth. He ran as high as fifth on three different occasions and only once found himself outside of the top ten when he was showing 11th on lap 144 and that only after making a pit stop while a few cars elected not to pit and remained on the race track. The car that Jason drove in Richmond was the same Braun Racing machine he piloted back in 2007 when he claimed his last Nationwide Series victory at Indianapolis’ O’Reilly Raceway Park.

Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth, Keselowski and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top five Richmond finishers behind Busch who earned his third victory of the 2009 season and is now 82 points better than Edwards heading to Darlington.