ROOKIE ERROR DERAILS HAMILTON’S BID FOR TOP-TEN FINISH

Things were going well for Team Smithfield Driver Bobby Hamilton until the latter stages of Saturday’s 300 mile race at Nashville Superspeedway. The Tennessee native was cruising along, just outside the top-ten, biding his time for a late race charge when disaster struck. A series rookie drove into the right side of Hamilton’s No. 25 Ford Fusion. The contact led to a cut tire just a few laps later and a very hard crash into the outside wall.

The Team Smithfield car was basically totaled from the hard impact. Even Hamilton knew it was going to be bad, alerting the crew just milliseconds before impact with a radio call of “this is going to hurt!”

The accident saddled Hamilton with a disappointing 30th place finish.

“We had a good handling race car tonight and were going to walk away with a top-ten finish,” Hamilton said. “Someone made a mistake and we paid dearly with a terrible finish and a destroyed race car. We will head to Kentucky now, a place we won at a few years ago, and get back on track.”

The Kentucky win came in the No. 25 Team Rensi Ford on a warm Summer night in 2003. Hamilton dominated the event and led Jason Keller to the checkered flag to claim his first of four wins that season.

Brad Keslowski claimed the win over a hard charging David Stremme.