LEBANON, Tenn. – Ken Butler III and the No. 23 Aaron’s Dream Machine No. 23 Chevrolet team of R3 Motorsports were running right where they needed at the midway point of the Nashville 300 on Saturday afternoon.
However, on lap 128, of 225, the No. 23 Chevrolet’s back end came around exiting Turn 2 on a restart. As hard as Butler tried to hang on, the back end got up into the outside retaining wall heavily damaging the rear end.
Before that moment, Butler III (KB3) showed great promise roaring from his qualifying position of 30th all the way to 19th in the first five laps around the 1.333-mile, concrete-oval. From there, he maintained a top-20 position dipping to 24th place. Even then, the Lilburn, Ga. native quickly broke back into the top-20 through restarts and hard racing.
On lap 88, as the field was exiting Turn 4, a multi-car wreck broke out in front of KB3. He quickly dove low through the infield grass to avoid the spinning cars and radioed in during the caution that the car was tight from the center off. This prevented him from aggressively exiting the corners to gain more speed on the straightaways. The crew made air pressure adjustments to rectify the handling problems.
He would restart 19th and slip to 24th again, but quickly worked his way back up to 22nd for a lap 122 debris caution. KB3 told the Aaron’s Dream Machine crew he was now better in the center.
It was on the ensuing lap-127 restart when the car’s back end broke free coming out of Turn 2.
After some major repair that took the team only 16 laps to complete, they returned to action on lap 143 in 39th place with banged up rear quarter panels sporting heavy amounts of bondo tape and a bent deck lid. This didn’t keep KB3 from completing more laps, though, as he stayed out until lap 164 picking up two more positions in the process.
He and the team would finish 37th to rank 26th in the all-important owner’s points. KB3 will be back behind the wheel of the No. 23 Aaron’s Dream Machine Chevrolet for this weekend’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Phoenix International Raceway.
Ken Butler III: “We started out so strong and were running our race the way we needed there at the halfway point. I managed to avoid that one big wreck and the crew kept working on the car to get us better.
“Just when it looked like we were going to start moving forward, the back end came around. It just broke around on me and went up into the outside wall. They said part of it might have been because we were on new tires when the air pressure was down. This is just my third Nationwide race and I know this is all part of the learning process. I just hate that way it ended for the team.
Aaron’s Sports Marketing Director – Rich Lamprey – 404-915-1683 - Richard.Lamprey@aaronrents.com
R3 Motorsports Media Relations Contact for Ken Butler III – Tim Packman - 704-507-1838 – timpackman@yahoo.com