Jeremy Clements Finishes 13th in ARCA Opener

SPARTANBURG, SC (February 12, 2006) – Clements hopped from his Chevy and quickly surveyed the holes in its front bumper before exchanging a round of celebratory high-fives with his crew members.

A little shattered fiberglass wasn’t going to damper this effort.

Clements survived seven caution flags – some too close for comfort – to finish 13th in Sunday’s season-opening ARCA race at Daytona International Speedway.

“I knew there were going to be a bunch of wrecks,” the 21-year-old Spartanburg driver said of the event that was postponed one day because of rain. “A lot of the guys weren’t driving with their heads on straight. There was a lot of wild driving going on.”

Pole sitter Bobby Gerhart won the caution-filled 200-mile race that was extended three laps to satisfy the series’ rule of a green-flag finish. Gerhart led for 78 of 83 laps. He was followed to the stripe by Matt McCall, Matt Hagans, Burney Lamar and Damon Lusk.

Forty-seven laps were run under yellow and the average speed of the race was 104.170 mph – more than 81 mph slower than Gerhart’s qualifying run.

Clements, who struggled to get more rpm out of his engine all week, qualified 30th and worked his way to 15th by Lap 3. After that, he was forced into survival mode as the “wild” field of racers – full of rookies and development drivers backed by Nextel Cup teams – continually tore up racecars and sheet metal.

Several times in the opening laps, cars went two- and three-wide. Clements got hung out in the middle, fell out of the top 25 and narrowly avoided a race-ending wreck with a spinning Danny O’Quinn on Lap 13.

O’Quinn, who was backed by Jack Roush Racing, hit a dip in the track between turns 1 and 2, lost control and twirled around on the backstretch. Clements slowed but couldn’t avoid contact with O’Quinn’s Ford.

“We hit him pretty hard,” Clements said of the wreck that knocked the toe-in out on his car. “It was pretty tore up on the right-front nose. I’m pretty surprised we didn’t finish worse than we did after that.”

Clements pitted and restarted 29th on Lap 22. Fifteen laps later, he narrowly missed a second major wreck when Ray Evernham development driver Scott Lagasse Jr. spun.

Clements slipped by unscathed, but that was the least of his worries.

Clements said he could hit 7,300 rpm in the earlier stages of a green-flag run but was only turning 6,800 rpm after several laps.

“The car just wouldn’t go, I was complaining on the radio after every restart,” he said.

Clements, however, posted a fast lap of 188.269 mph – a speed comparable to what the leaders were running – in the first half of the race. But track position and problems on long runs never allowed him to move into the thick of the lead draft.

“It was running at first, but after a few laps, it was like I threw out an anchor,” he said.