Marc Mitchell qualified 31st but made his way up to 8th within sixteen laps before disaster struck on pit road.

Tallahassee, FL - At Talladega Superspeedway everything has to go right in order for you to have a good day and it seemed like that was going to be the case for the recent Auburn graduate until a mistake by another driver ended Marc’s day.

After qualifying a disappointing 31st Mitchell was looking forward to the race where he believed the car would be very strong. “We gambled on the gear for qualifying so we would have a good car for the race, with the impound rule in effect this weekend our team felt like we had a strong enough car to give up a little on qualifying to make the car better for the race.” When the green flag dropped Mitchell wasted no time making his way to the front, within sixteen laps Marc had made his way from 31st all the way to 8th place when a caution came out. When the green flag came back out Mitchell’s #8 ERGON car was suffering from overheating problems forcing Marc to break away from the draft to cool down the motor. Once the overheating problem was solved Marc was ready to make another charge to the front. At the halfway point of the race another caution fell and this brought the leaders to pit road including Marc. After a lightning fast pit stop Marc was an innocent victim of another driver’s error. While Marc was driving out of pit road another car came across the pit road and hit Mitchell’s car ending any chances of putting the ERGON back up front. After further evaluation by the team it was decided that the car had suffered too much damage to continue.

Even though Mitchell’s hopes of a good finish were cut short by circumstances out of his control he still feels like the race weekend was a success. “I just want to thank ERGON for all of their support, I was fortunate enough to meet a lot of their employees this weekend and I just hope that they had a good time and took pride in seeing their car run as good as it did.” With Talladega behind him Marc is looking forward to the rest of the ’06 season and a fresh start in ’07. “Talladega was a good confidence builder, and I want to take that and build towards a strong year in ’07.”