Drew Herring Iowa II Race Report

Herring Finishes 11th in Sport Clips Toyota at Iowa Speedway on Saturday Night

The Finish: Drew Herring drove the Sport Clips Toyota to a career-best fifth-place qualifying spot Saturday night at Iowa Speedway, but struggled with a tight handling race car in the race, finishing 11th in his fourth NASCAR Nationwide Series event of the season for Joe Gibbs Racing.

The Race Recap: Saturday started off great for Herring and the No. 20 Sport Clips team. Herring qualified fifth for the US Cellular 250 at Iowa Speedway, besting his previous career-best qualifying effort of 13th. When the green flag dropped for the event, Herring found himself running solidly in the top-10. On the first round of pit stops, the No. 20 team elected to take four tires when most of the field took only two. That caused Herring to lose valuable track position and forced the No. 20 team to battle back from the 20th position. Herring had an extremely tight racecar most of the day as Crew Chief Adam Stevens and the team made major adjustments to get the car handling better. By lap 170, Herring finally found himself back in the top-10, running as high as seventh. However, despite the major adjustments, the tight condition continued for the remainder of the event. Herring was able to come home with a solid 11th-place finish when the checkered flag flew.

Drew Herring

Photo by: Ashley Dickerson, ASP Inc.

Drew's Quotes: “To come out of here with an 11th-place finish isn’t bad, but it’s not what we should have had tonight with the Sport Clips Toyota. We had a great car in practice and qualifying. After qualifying, I really thought we would have something for them tonight. But when the race started, the car just got tight and it kept getting worse. On the second run of the night, the car was so tight that I could hardly even drive it. Luckily, the cautions came out and we were able to stay on the lead lap, but we just couldn’t get the car to loosen up enough. Adam made a ton of big changes and it helped, but it never got to the point that it needed to be. I know after the race Adam and I talked and we just aren’t sure what happened to the car. We all felt pretty good after qualifying, but I don’t know what happened. I’m not sure if something happened to the car or what. They’ll look it over at the shop and they’ll figure it out.

“The worst part is that I was hoping to have a better run for Sport Clips. They’ve been very supportive of my time here with Joe Gibbs Racing and they deserved to run better than that. So I’m really upset that we couldn’t get them a better run. I was also hoping to get a better finish considering the way we’ve run the last two weeks. We were fast at Nashville and Indy, but we just didn’t have it this weekend. Hopefully, we’ll get another shot to work together later this year and we can get a couple of more solid runs.

“It’s been a blast working with Adam and all of the guys on the team. Joe Gibbs Racing, Sport Clips and everyone involved with this organization are just class acts. I’ve never had so much fun racing in my entire career, even when I was winning championships back in my Late Model days. This has been a blast and hopefully we’ll be able to get a few more races in later this year.”