ROGERS, TEAM CAN’T SOLVE LOOSE HANDLING CONDITION
AND FINISHES FRUSTRATING 25TH IN MICHIGAN TRUCK RACE

Unable to solve a loose handling condition through most of Saturday afternoon’s Michigan 200 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at the Michigan International Speedway, Clay Rogers and his Key Motorsports team were forced to settle for a frustrating 25th place finish.

“Whenever I would get alongside another truck or come up behind one, I just could not turn the truck. It was really frustrating,” Rogers said after the race. “We were really loose, and even though we did make it a little better with some adjustments during the race, we never did get it to the point that I could get alongside someone and actually make the pass,” he added.

Rogers and his mates believed that they had solved the handling woes that beset the team during Friday afternoon’s final practice session with adjustments made for Saturday morning’s qualifying session. Rogers turned a qualifying lap that was nearly four tenths of a second quicker than where he practiced.

However, the race track changed dramatically following a lengthy Nextel Cup Series practice session and higher temperatures that greeted the 36 starters when the green flag fell.

Through the early going, Rogers made some progress from his 28th starting position, moving to 24th by lap 49. The longer the run and the more worn the tires got the better the #40 Curtis Key Plumbing Chevrolet Silverado ran, but Rogers still found passing difficult.

“I could really suck up to other cars in the draft, but once I got close to them the truck just got ridiculously loose,” said Rogers, who on several occasions during the race would run down a pack of four to five trucks all running together for position before his truck would literally hit a brick wall.

On one occasion, Rogers ran down a pack of trucks that included the machines driven by Dennis Setzer, Tim Sauter, Blake Bjorklund and Ryan Matthews and actually passed them all coming down the front stretch. Once the pack reached the first turn, however, Rogers didn’t have enough muster to complete the pass and was shoved back to his original position. The script was repeated several other times during the event.

“We had a good race truck, but with the way things worked out, we would have probably been better bringing a truck that had more down force,” added Rogers, who did say that Setzer, with whom Clay raced for position in a heated, side-by-side and nose-to-tail battle over the race’s final dozen laps, commented to him following the race that he couldn’t believe how strong the #40 was in sucking up to other trucks in a draft.

The best position that the #40 could get to during the race was 22nd on a lap 55 caution.

Rogers, in his final race for Key Motorsports for the foreseeable future as he attempts to earn his second USAR Hooter’s pro Cup Late Model Division title with crucial races over the next few weeks, did finish on the lead lap. He was one of 27 to do so.