Rookie Hopes to Bounce Back at Season Finale Weekend

Beginners luck didn't find Chad McCumbee this weekend as the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series headed to Phoenix International Raceway for the Casino Arizona 150 event, where he brought the #08 TheGPSstore.com/Garmin machine home to a 29th-place finish.

"This weekend wasn't too good for us," said McCumbee. "In racing you aren't ever going to have a perfect weekend every weekend. We have had two good ones in a row, and we thought that we were going to have another good one going this weekend.

"We practiced really well, and I thought that we had a really good shot at getting a good finish at Phoenix, which is the type of track that we have struggled with this year. But come qualifying time we were really loose, and we didn't get the starting position we really wanted."

Once he took the green flag, things didn't get much better for the Green Light racing team.

"We struggled all race long. It turned out that we had a rear-end problem, and then we also had a battery go dead halfway through the race. It just kind of added insult to injury and made a bad day even worse. It wasn't a really good outing for us."

Chad hopes to turn that around this weekend as the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series heads to Homestead-Miami Speedway for the season finale with the Ford 200 on Friday night. It will be the last chance for Chad to make a statement this season, and he would really like to end it in a bang.

It will be yet another new track for the young hotshoe, but he isn't going to let that deter him.

"I am really looking forward to Homestead. It is the style of track that we have had the most success on all year long. I think it will be a good cross between a Nashville and an Atlanta, and we have run good at both of those places. I have never been there before, but I think with Bobby's experience and everybody behind me, that we will have a really good run with TheGPSstore.com/Garmin Chevrolet."

After competing in the Craftsman Truck Series event on Friday night, McCumbee will board a plane and be back on his way to North Carolina, where he plans to spend the rest of his weekend returning to his roots.

McCumbee will be competing in the Late Model Stock portion of the Myrtle Beach 200 weekend at Myrtle Beach Speedway (SC). It is a track that McCumbee has been around several times, and he hopes that these next two races will allow him to make it a double-win weekend.

"It's going to be tough to do all I want to this weekend," added McCumbee. "I haven't missed a Myrtle Beach 400 weekend in the last few years. I am going to try and come make that race again. It will obviously be tougher this year because of my Craftsman Truck schedule. I will miss two days of practice and just show up Saturday and try to qualify. It will be a challenge for me, and who knows, under that amount of stress, maybe we can pull out a win."