MADISON, Ill. (July 15, 2010) — After a week off, Pacific Northwest native Tayler Malsam is ready to resume racing in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series and what better location to return to action than at the track where he scored his best career finish?
Once again driving for Braun Racing in the No. 10 Iron Horse Jeans Toyota, Malsam will make his sixth series start in the Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 at 5:15 p.m. (PT) on Saturday at Gateway International Raceway. Live coverage of the race will be provided by ESPN2, beginning with NASCAR Countdown at 4 p.m. (PT). The cable network will also air qualifying at 1:30 p.m. (PT) on Saturday.
Gateway, a 1.25-mile slightly-banked egg-shaped oval that some have likened to a flat Darlington, is where Malsam finished fifth in a 2009 Camping World Truck Series race — his best NASCAR result to date. Although the 21-year-old started 17th in that truck race, Gateway isn’t a track that always rewards a good qualifying effort. Just one of 13 Nationwide Series races there have been won from the pole — Martin Truex Jr. in 2004 — and drivers have made it to Victory Lane from as far back on the starting grid as the ninth row.
Saturday’s race at Gateway marks the first of three straight “standalone” races where the Nationwide and Cup series do not compete at the same venue. Malsam is slated to run two of the three for Braun Racing, skipping the middle race at O’Reilly Raceway Park on July 24 but returning to action at Iowa Speedway on July 31.
Prior scheduling commitments at Braun Racing meant Malsam was sidelined for the last Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland Speedway, where NASCAR veteran David Reutimann drove the No. 10 to a fourth-place finish one night before scoring his second career Sprint Cup victory. Malsam spent the off-time relaxing in Idaho before returning to the East Coast earlier this week to get ready for Gateway.
Although this is an off-weekend for NASCAR’s top series, many Cup regulars are slated to race at Gateway, including current Nationwide point leader Brad Keselowski as well as two-time Gateway winners Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards. Kyle Busch, the defending race winner and Malsam’s former team owner in the truck series, is not scheduled to race.
The Nationwide series will return to Gateway for a second date in October, but the 21-year-old from Sammamish, Wash., isn’t currently scheduled for that race.
In his last series race on July 2 at Daytona, Malsam finished 18th after surviving a wild scramble during a green-white-checkered ending to the Subway Jalapeno 250, the debut of the new Nationwide Series Car of Tomorrow. Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the race in a No. 3 car that carried a retro yellow-and-blue paint scheme to honor his late father, Dale Earnhardt.
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