Robert Richardson made his career-first start at the California Speedway Friday night in the racetickets.com 200. Richardson, a 23-year old rookie from McKinney, Texas, qualified his No. 1 WinYourMortgage.com Dodge in the 29th position for the 100 lap race. Richardson would suffer from a flat tire and a loose race truck for the entire 100-lap race before taking the checkered flag in the 33rd position.

The first caution of the race took place on lap eight when a left rear tire on Richardson's race truck blew causing him to spin coming off of turn two. After a visit to pit road for fresh tires Richardson made his way back onto the race track. But when a second caution flew on lap 19, the lead trucks came down pit road and Richardson elected to remain on the race track and move into the second position. As the field once again came to the green flag for the restart on lap 21, Richardson found himself in the second position with a loose race truck. The field would take the green and Richardson moved to the high side of the race track in order to give the trucks with fresher tires the low line around the track. Unfortunately the loose condition under the WinYourMortgage.com Dodge would get the best of Richardson and the truck would spin out coming off the turn four.

Following the second spin, Richardson brought his truck behind the wall to the attention of his R3 team members in order to solve the problem. Richardson would return to the track ten laps down, but with a much more stable race truck. As the laps wound down on the event, Richardson had developed a solid line around the track and was running lap times consistently faster than the ten trucks ahead of him on the scoring monitors. But the ten laps behind the wall would force Richardson and R3 to accept the 33rd place finish at California.

"We were disappointed with the finish," said Richardson. "The truck was so loose and then losing that tire early on just forced us to work even harder to get the truck right. After we were able to get the truck behind the wall and see what the problem was, then I was able to get into a rhythm and turn consistently strong laps. We lost a lot of ground at California, but it was a learning experience that we have to take and move forward to the next race."