{"id":16475,"date":"2018-04-16T17:00:13","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T22:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=16475"},"modified":"2018-04-16T21:08:42","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T02:08:42","slug":"stenhouse-fights-adversity-for-best-finish-of-the-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/16\/stenhouse-fights-adversity-for-best-finish-of-the-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Stenhouse fights adversity for best finish of the season"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

It may have been the hardest effort Ricky Stenhouse Jr.<\/strong> has ever had to put in for a fourth-place finish. But the result at Bristol Motor Speedway<\/strong> Monday afternoon, his first top-five of the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup<\/a> season made every clutch decision, every zig and every zag worth it for Stenhouse and his Roush-Fenway Racing team.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driver of the #17 Fastenal Ford. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe were really, really strong and I felt confident coming into the race yesterday and today,” said Stenhouse, a former NASCAR Xfinity Series champion and two-time Monster Energy Series race winner in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fought adversity. We lost track position multiple times and had to pass a lot of cars to get back to where we were.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Crew chief] Brian [Pattie] made a great call coming down pit road and taking tires before that long green flag run we had. We got into second and I was hoping it would just go green to the end, knowing we had better tires than the 42 [race runner-up Kyle Larson], who was the class of the field all day.”<\/p>\n

Stenhouse, who won at two superspeedways — Talladega and Daytona –last year, looked absolutely a contender on the sport\u2019s opposite venue, the half-mile Bristol bullring on Monday \u2013 a full 24 hours after the original green flag dropped.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (Photo by Chris Graythen\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

As he did on Sunday, Stenhouse again methodically worked his way forward in a two-day rain-interrupted event that proved difficult for most drivers to proficiently establish any consistent rhythm.<\/p>\n

After negotiating traffic all day, having his crew fine tune the No. 17 Sunny D Ford Fusion and getting through the tight traffic, Stenhouse finally got close enough to the front to challenge. And he did.<\/p>\n

He restarted in fourth place after a caution flag for a late-race incident involving fellow Ford driver Brad Keselowski and quickly worked his way up to then-leader Larson\u2019s bumper providing one of the best battles of the afternoon before Larson was able to drive off.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was fun,” Stenhouse said. \u201cI had to get to him and he was really loose. I was able to get underneath him and then I couldn\u2019t quite clear him. It would have been nice if I could have cleared him, but we still didn\u2019t have the best car there on the short run. We were definitely a better long-run car.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, it was just the dose of can-do that Stenhouse\u2019s team needed after a slow start to the 2018 season \u2013 after celebrating 2017 with a pair of big trophies and lots of optimism. It was his first top-five and only second top-15 of the year as the series heads to another short track, Richmond (Va.) Raceway this weekend and then back to Talladega Superspeedway where Stenhouse won from the pole position last spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were fighting track position, gaining it and losing it back-and-forth over the last two days but all in all, it was a really strong run for our Sunny D Ford,” Stenhouse said. \u201cWe had a good Friday, a good Saturday and a good race on Sunday and Monday. I\u2019m glad we were able to get it all in and we appreciate the fans for sticking around. That was a fun race.”<\/p>\n

And best of all for Stenhouse, a turning point for the early season.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll in all, a great weekend for us,\u2019\u2019 Stenhouse said. \u201cHopefully this will kind of get us going and kick start us into next week and the rest of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service It may have been the hardest effort Ricky Stenhouse Jr. has ever had to put in for a fourth-place finish. But the result at Bristol Motor Speedway Monday afternoon, his first top-five of the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup season made every clutch decision, every zig and every zag worth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,459],"class_list":["post-16475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-ricky-stenhouse-jr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/StenhouseJr-2018MENCS-CarShot-2.jpg?fit=4103%2C2731","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-4hJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16482,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16475\/revisions\/16482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}