AVONDALE, AZ - Hoping to make a comeback in the Nationwide Series points race after a three week stuggle was Morgan Shepherd's goal heading to Phoenix.
Unfortunately, his struggle to pull ahead of much of the competition suffered its fourth straight week of disappointment as the team spent much of the early stages of Friday night's Bashas Supermarkets 200 in the garage.
"We were down on power in practice and qualifying and couldn't fiqure out why," Shepherd said. "The alternator was out and we didn't know it until after the race started and the car kept getting weaker and weaker."
Shepherd pulled the car behind the wall just after the first yellow flag of the night and the crew quickly changed out the needed parts. By that time, however, a chance at a quality finish was out the window.
Shepherd finished the race in 35th place after a disappointing 39th place qualifying effort. The result dropped him to 23rd in driver's points and shuffled his team to the 30th spot in owner's points, just three points ahead of the 31st place running team.
"We have to pick it up, that is all there is to it," Shepherd said. "We have a good speedway car for next week and we will test this coming week for Richmond and try to get ready for there. We need some good finishes."
Shepherd said he is confident the team can run like it did at California and Las Vegas, where he turned in 19th and 13th place runs respectively, but the on-track results have been lacking.
"We have what we need to run better than we are," he said. "We just need to have things go our way and run the way we are capable of and things will work out fine."
The team was caught up in accidents at Bristol and Nashville and was forced to run a backup car at Texas, resulting in three poor performances prior to Friday night's race.
"We'll get there. We feel good about our program and where we're headed."
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