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From Team Press Release
June 4, 2004
10:13 AM EDT (1413 GMT)
Jon Wood scored a top-five finish at Dover last year and is hoping to do the same this year. He was fastest in practice last year, but had to start 11th based on points after rain washed out qualifying. He kept the No. 50 Roush Racing Ford F-150 up front in the lead pack of trucks for the entire race and came away with a fourth-place finish.
"We had a great truck at Dover last year which made that race really fun," Wood said. "Dover is a great track when your truck is handling well and you can run up front. It's so fast that if you don't have good track position you are likely to get caught up in some sort of wreck that may, or may not be of your doing. That's what happened to me the first time I raced there in 2002. I got caught in a wreck real early in the race and ended up in 29th place."
Wood will be driving chassis No. 31 at Dover, which is the same truck he raced to a seventh place finish in Daytona this February. It has not raced since then.
"We ran this truck at Daytona and it was really good," Wood said. "Then we tested it at Chicagoland Speedway in May and worked on a few things. I think we got it where we want it and it should be a good truck at Dover. You wouldn't think a Daytona truck would be good at Dover, but I think as long as you take any truck that handles well to Dover it will be okay."
Wood is currently ninth in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series point standings. He is only 37 points out of fifth place and is 173 points out of first. Poor finishes at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Lowe's Motor Speedway have not helped him in the points.
"I really hope all of our bad races are out of the way now," Wood said. "We finished 27th at Atlanta and 17th at Charlotte. The other three have all been top-10 finishes. We had a good truck in Charlotte, but some bad luck during the race. We had the same thing happen to us early in the season last year and Dover seemed to be our turning point. We had consistently good finishes starting at Dover and it lasted all summer. With any luck Dover will be our turning point again this year and it will be a turn for the better."
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