News Article

Aric Almirola wins the Sunoco 150; Matt Kobyluck crowned 2008 NASCAR Camping World Series champion

September 19, 2008
Brian Smith

Click here for Sunoco 150 race results

Alimorla takes the super high line through Turn 1.

There was a set of bookends in Friday’s NASCAR Camping World Series East Sunoco 150. For Aric Almirola, it was the end of a whirlwind week.  For Matt Kobyluck, it was the arrival at the top of a mountain he’d been climbing for a decade. 

Almirola won the race, driving home the No. 8 car that he took over from Jeffrey Earnhardt earlier this week. It was a drive-by win for Almirola in his first – and maybe only – Camping World series race. The driver will take over the No. 8 ride in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series full-time next year.

Meanwhile, with a third-place finish, the 38-year-old Kobyluck clinched his first NASCAR title by virtue of his point lead over Austin Dillon. Kobyluck’s series title is his first in NASCAR, and he also becomes the first Native American to win a NASCAR series championship. It comes ten years after he first joined the series following a bad accident in the Pro Stock division at Stafford Motor Speedway that left him seriously injured. 

“It’s a huge day,” Kobyluck said. “As an owner/driver independent, to have the group of guys we’ve put together, to be able to compete for championships and win races the way we have, and to look down the garage and it’s all Cup teams, it just goes to show that you don’t need to be from North Carolina to win championships.”

It was a good place for Kobyluck to be if he was getting ready to clinch a championship.  He holds the series record for the fastest average speed in a race at 116.179 mph, which he registered in a win in 2006. He also recorded a fourth-place finish in 2004. 

Kobyluck drove home behind an attention-grabbing one-two battle between Almirola and second-place finisher Marc Davis. Almirola said he found out on Wednesday that he’d be driving in the race, and was asked what he knew about the Camping World Series before race day.

“Nothing,” Almirola replied. “I’ve watched, because I have a vested interest in it, because of working at DEI and them having three Camping World cars. It’s an awesome series.  These guys race really, really hard. As far as who was who and who I could race and couldn’t race, and who I had to look out for, I didn’t know anything. I went into this completely blind.”

Davis led the race for a time, but Almirola was able to pass him late and take the win by 1.495 seconds. It was a come-from-behind effort – Almirola had a flat tire under green earlier in the race, and went almost two laps down while taking care of it.

“It was cool,” Amirola said. “To come back from everything, have a right front tire to go down under green and almost go two laps down… my pit crew did an awesome job of not going two laps down. That was really a good job on their part. When we were a lap down we hit pit road under every caution and kept hitting the car and adjusting it. I felt like my car was a little bit better on long runs, but Marc’s car was better on short runs.”

“It was tough for us,” Davis said. “Aric and I go back a few years, so definitely I wanted to beat him out. I took tires pretty late in the run and I knew it was going to be tough to hold him off. We equalized him for a little bit.”

The makeup of the race changed rather significantly not long into the event when the top three starters – Brian Ickler, Peyton Sellers and Trevor Bayne – collected one another while leading the race at lap 17. Ickler was knocked out of the race, while Sellers and Bayne were able to limp back out and run additional laps over the course of the afternoon. 

The race was stopped for a lengthy red flag after a bad accident involving James Pritchard, Jr., Tim Andrews, Alex Kennedy and Jeff Anton. One car was destroyed when it was hit in the back end as it came back down the track from the outside wall, sending pieces and fluids flying all over the backstretch.

Although Almirola was the winner, in the end, it was Kobyluck’s day. Afterwards, the driver recalled the 2002 season, when he missed out on a championship by just nine points to Andy Santerre.

“The reality of it is I guess everything happens for a reason,” Kobyluck said.  “Sometimes as much as you think you’re in control of the situation that’s happening, you may not be. I attribute that to racing luck, a plan bigger than we may realize exists… you can try your hardest, but it just may not work out. And it’s not for a lack of effort. Sometimes you just can’t control what happens. I don’t look back at 2002. I think it was a growing experience for all of us.  I think we should have won that year, but to lose it to Andy Santerre and to have him be a four-time champion, it’s a testament to all the work he put in that year.”

It was also a meaningful day for longtime crew chief  Perry Waite, who’s been with Kobyluck since 2000.”

“There’s been plenty of ups and downs along the way, that’s for sure,” Kobyluck said. “If you asked anyone who’s been in racing for a while, it’s an emotional roller coaster. It’s certainly been that way for us. We’ve been contenders in the past and have come within nine points of winning a championship. To finally seal the deal here, at Dover, is incredible.”

Thirteen cars finished the day on the lead lap. Steve Park was fourth, followed by Bobby Hamilton, Jr. in fifth. Matt Hirschman, Ricky Carmichael, Jody Lavender, Austin Dillon and Bryon Chew rounded out the top 10.