Kobyluck Puts Exclamation Point On Championship Season With Seventh

Matt Kobyluck went into Stafford Motor Speedway’s Carquest Fall Final with absolutely no pressure. He had locked up the 2008 NASCAR Camping World Series East Championship for the Mohegan Sun Racing team at Dover International Speedway last month. Still, the competitive spirit in him prevailed and Kobyluck posted a top-10 finish – his 12th of the season.

“It was anti-climatic for me. I got that left rear flat early on and had to pit. The tires we had for an emergency set were the tires we practiced on all day Saturday. The left rear wasn’t what we needed. Thecar wasn’t that good, but we made the most of it and got all the positions we could without getting over-aggressive. We had to take what we had.”

Kobyluck, a former regular competitor at Stafford Motor Speedway, to no surprise topped the speed charts in practice. In qualifying, Kobyluck was in the first group of cars to go out and posted a lap of 19.677 seconds. He was the fastest qualifier through many cars, but was knocked off the provisional pole position midway through the session, and completed qualifying with a sixth place starting position.

When the race took the green flag Sunday afternoon, Kobyluck was saving the #40 Mohegan Sun Casino Chevrolet for later. It was a strategy he had used all season long – come on strong at the end. Still, Kobyluck moved up into the top-five in the first five laps of the race. Kobyluck battled with Mike Olsen for a couple of laps before pulling into fourth at lap 11.

Caution slowed the pace on lap 32 and Kobyluck lined up in the field for the restart. While weaving to get some heat in the tires, Kobyluck felt that something wasn’t right. He immediately headed to pit road where the crew changed his tire.

Kobyluck went to the tail of the field and had his work cut out for him. He began to progress through the field with ease – making it up to 13th by the halfway mark and into the top-10 by lap 100. But working so hard had its price.

“Everybody got a little tight. I couldn’t get in the corner like I wanted to because of that left rear tire. It made it a little tighter. We had used up everything we had to come back up through so the tightness that we had at the end was the result of that.”

Long, green flag runs dominated the first part of the race, but the last 50 laps were littered with cautions. Kobyluck’s momentum was not cut short, however, and the Mohegan Sun Chevrolet made it up to seventh before the checkers dropped.

“The last 50 laps closed us up to the leaders and I could get some positions that way whereas it may have taken us a long time to get by them had it stayed green,” said Kobyluck. “It was a fun race for us. We persevered through adversity, which is what we’ve done all season long.”

Kobyluck concluded the season with a 210-point lead over runner-up Austin Dillon in the final point standings. In 13 races, Kobyluck scored a total of four wins, nine top-five, and 12 top-10 finishes. His average finish this season was fifth place.

Kobyluck and the Mohegan Sun Casino race team will be honored for their achievements at the annual NASCAR awards banquet to be held in December at the Mohegan Sun Casino and Resort.