“Atlanta II: Matt Kenseth race report - Motorsport.com” plus 4 more

Atlanta II: Matt Kenseth race report - Motorsport.com
NASCAR Chase Patrol: Kahne Digs It At Atlanta As Vickers Closes In For ... - Bleacherreport.com
12 websites that may help you save money without hassle - ABC 15 News
Tight auto market makes training tough - Philiy.com
Phase of phrase inactivity ends - Dubuque Telegraph Herald

Atlanta II: Matt Kenseth race report - Motorsport.com

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 01:44 PM PDT

Race for Chase will go down to wire for No. 17 Team

HAMPTON, Ga. (Sept. 7, 2009) -- Matt Kenseth battled back from an early brush with the wall to finish 12th in Sunday night's Pep Boys Auto 500. In one of the most up and down races of the season for the team, Kenseth's R+L Carriers Ford was extremely loose early, eventually making hard contact with the wall and dropping all the way back to 31st position and falling a lap down. The team rebounded, working feverishly during cautions to fix the car, with Kenseth advancing as far as fourth, before hanging on for the 12th-place finish.

With the finish, Kenseth moves into next week's final race before the Chase cutoff point in 12th position; the final spot in the Chase field.

"We were pretty optimistic in practice yesterday, but we started the race way off," said Kenseth. "I ran into the wall early, which isn't the team's fault; it's my fault. That hurt us, but the car is just so inconsistent and hard to drive. I don't know, we just can't really seem to figure out how to get these cars to go fast."

Kenseth started the race 15th based on his best qualifying effort at the track in seven years. Despite a very loose-handling Ford, he moved to 12th before making contact with the outside wall and dropping all the way to 31st and going a lap down on lap 36.

The race's first caution was issued seconds later and Kenseth was awarded the free pass. The team used the next two cautions to work to repair the damaged R+L Carriers Ford. Once the car was repaired, Kenseth began to etch his way back through the field, breaking back inside the top 20 on lap 110.

After a stop for four tires and track bar and air pressure adjustments on lap 131, Kenseth restarted in 19th position and embarked on his most impressive runs of the night. He drove his No. 17th all the way back to 11th by lap 179. After a green flag stop on lap 185, the team moved inside the top 10 for the first time of the race on lap 190.

He would advance to as high as sixth after a restart on lap 207, but the car's splitter was dragging the race track and effectively limited Kenseth's ability to race with the event leaders -- especially on the short run. It would be a problem that would hurt the team's effort all night, eventually costing them a top 10.

"We started so far off," added Kenseth. "We got it really good for one run and tried to change it just a little bit more and made it worse, so I don't know. We kept going one way or the other and could never get it really right. We had one run that was really, really good and that's it. We could never get it to drive like that again and I have no idea why."

Kenseth hit his highest mark of fourth after a restart for the race's eighth caution on lap 252. Restarting in eighth, he moved all the way to fourth, before issues with the splitter would force him back to 10th position just five laps later.

"We knew it (the splitter) was dragging about lap 30, but we chose not to fix it. On a long run, you could live with it, but it's going to get worse as the night goes on and the team just decided not to mess with it. You can put shims in there and that's something you can do on a pit stop, but it costs you time."

Kenseth was running in ninth position when the race's 10th and final caution was issued on lap 311. The team came down pit road one last time for four tires and restarted in seventh position. However, with the car's issues, Kenseth once again would be unable to hold position over the run, falling back to 12th position where he would finish the race.

"Well, it probably would have been (an incredible comeback) if we would have finished fifth or sixth or seventh, but at the end there we just couldn't go anywhere on restarts because we had something in the car wrong," added Kenseth. "The splitter would drag so hard that there was no possible way you could turn. I lost five or six spots on that restart, so it's pretty frustrating."

Kenseth and the team now head to Richmond just 20 points ahead of 13th-place Brian Vickers and 37 points ahead of 14th-place Kyle Busch. He trails 11th-place Greg Biffle by 48 points, but is only 76 points out of sixth.

The green flag for next weekend's showdown in Richmond will fly at 7:43 p.m. EDT.

-credit: rfr

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NASCAR Chase Patrol: Kahne Digs It At Atlanta As Vickers Closes In For ... - Bleacherreport.com

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:12 AM PDT

Richmond might be hosting some dramatic developments for the Chase contenders in next Saturday night's Chevy Rock and Roll 400 following the events of the Pep Boys Auto Parts 500 at Atlanta.

After all, it was home to Jeremy Mayfield's incredible victory that bagged the No. 19 team's spot in the inaugural Chase for The NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship.

It was where Jeff Gordon's inconsistent 2005 season witnessed its lowest point by missing the top 10 spot despite having three victories.

Tony Stewart's anger got the best of him in 2006, and that was not even during the race. Smoke's Chase efforts wrecked immediately after his primary car rolled off the hauler, crashing in turn two...during pre-qualifying practice!

However, Sunday evening's race at the Atlanta Motor Speedway may have gained itself a new reputation as the "House That Chase and Kahne Built."

Fans and competitors witnessed some interesting events at AMS, which have tightened up what is shaping up to be an already exciting race for those final, coveted playoff positions.

Kasey Kahne, who entered the night from the 11th position in the points race, helped his cause with a stout victory ahead of a seemingly rejuvenated Kevin Harvick and Juan Pablo Montoya.

With the K-Man's second victory of 2009, the 29-year-old Enumclaw, Wash. native leapfrogged up to sixth place in the championship standings.

Glancing over the top 10 finishers of the 500-miler, the usual Chase suspects lived up to their expectations, with David Reutimann and Brian Vickers making their presence known outside of the top-12 drivers.

That said, Kahne and Vickers have certainly boosted their chances of making the top-12, with the former just needing to have a solid day to book the No. 9 Budweiser Dodge team's ticket for title contention.

As for Vickers, the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota program may not be in the Chase, but they are certainly within striking distance to make it into postseason play (making Katie Stephenson very happy!).

Although Richmond is not exactly their strongest track, the Ryan Pemberton-led team could ruffle some feathers from perennial Chase figure Matt Kenseth and NASCAR's "bad boy" in Kyle Busch.

Sitting just 20 markers behind Kenseth, who finished 12th in a fading No. 17 DeWalt Ford, Vickers' night was salvaged despite a broken axle just past halfway in the event. Working diligently, the No. 83 crew was able to repair their machine in seemingly Cole Trickle-esque fashion (think Days of Thunder in the Daytona 500 race).

TRB's No. 83 entry was able to stay on the lead lap, beating the pace car on the track and eventually gaining positions by finishing in a stout seventh spot.

Sunday night's contenders saw some of the sport's budding stars fiercely competing against some of the series' struggling faces all going for a common goal: the checkered flag.

Harvick, whose No. 29 Shell/Pennzoil Chevy team has endured something of an off year, composed his best race of the 2009 season with a runner-up effort. It was not by luck or pit strategy.

Rather, Harvick and his fledgling Richard Childress Racing collective compiled an excellent effort altogether, with a car that was untouchable on the long runs.

For a moment, particularly in the waning stages of this race, it appeared as if Harvick was going to end his 95-race winless streak which dates back to the 2007 Daytona 500.

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12 websites that may help you save money without hassle - ABC 15 News

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:26 AM PDT

PHOENIX -- You want to save money but sometimes looking for a good deal costs too much of another commodity, your time.

Instead of searching around several websites to compare prices on items like laptops or cameras, try smarter.com or pricegrabber.com.

Both sites will show you what a certain item is going for at several different companies so you quickly gauge who has the best deal.

Many cities across the Valley are urging you to "shop local". The reason: cities are fighting to hold on to as much sales tax revenue as they can because that is the primary source for city budgets.

If you want to shop locally, check out moneymailer.com.

At this site you can type in your zip code and find a list of restaurants, auto repair shops, home improvement businesses, and nearly everything you can think of.

Next to the company's name and location you will see coupon offers.

For instance a restaurant near you may be offering a coupon for a free desert or allow you to buy one entrée and get another free.

You can have the coupons sent to your phone.

Anyone who has done it knows that clipping coupons can be incredibly time consuming.

Sites like smartsource.com, coupons.com, and coolsavings.com streamline the process.

You just print the coupons you want.

If you are looking to not pay anything at all, check out justfreestuff.com and thefreesite.com.

More cash can be found in rebates, you can explore the money you can get back at morerebates.com and ebates.com.

If you are already shopping on-line and want to save some money at checkout, make sure you go to couponcode.com and dealworker.com before you submit your order.

You've probably seen it before, just as you are about to buy something online there is a section of the form that asks if you have a promo code.

Well couponcode.com and dealworker.com supply lists of codes for various retailers that could get you free shipping or several dollars off the final price.

You simply would copy and paste those codes into the promo code field during your checkout process to earn the discount.

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Tight auto market makes training tough - Philiy.com

Posted: 07 Sep 2009 08:22 AM PDT

Trying to diagnose an ailing Ford F-150 pickup last week, 16 Gloucester County College students took as much time to stare at a laptop as they spent under the hood.

Forget mechanic. These are today's aspiring auto technicians, studying math, computers, and applied physics, as well as auto-service fundamentals.

But another phase of the program may be even more challenging - and not just for students.

The recession and car-dealership consolidations have schools scrambling for cooperative-education opportunities for automotive students, say administrators at GCC, where the novices will take on their first "real world" assignments this month.

The GCC program, launched in 1989, once placed students with nearly 40 Ford-Lincoln-Mercury dealers within 50 miles of the Sewell campus. Now it works with 15 - just two in Gloucester County, according to Jeff Silvestri, program coordinator for 18 years.

"There are times in history when dealer cooperation has waned, and this is one of them," said Jim Kelly, a Philadelphia-region field-service engineer for Ford Motor Co.

Gloucester County College's five-semester associate degree program, sponsored by Ford, alternates between 10 weeks in the classroom and 10 weeks on the job. Sixteen students began in July; a dozen in their second year are finishing their third co-op.

Unlike neighborhood auto shops, dealerships offer students a predictable progression of learning experiences, from predelivery inspections to oil changes to brake repairs to diagnostics, educators say.

"Many students opt for independent shops, but you never know what to expect. Today you're doing oil changes, and tomorrow you're putting in a new transmission," said Siobhan Kelly, director of job development at Camden County Technical Schools.

Nine of the 28 auto technicians at Holman Ford Lincoln Mercury in Maple Shade graduated from GCC's Ford ASSET program, said service manager Roy Harris.

But Holman - which once wanted to sponsor an entire class of 20 students, according to Silvestri - accepted no GCC trainees this fall.

"We had a consolidation last November of two of our stores," Harris said. "We didn't have a need to bring on guys."

Such economic fallout will force more students at area programs to obtain hands-on experience at private full-service repair shops.

"We still have many students in the remaining dealerships, and they are our priority," John Byrne, automotive technology director at Montgomery County College, wrote in an e-mail. Specialty shops and outlets that deal exclusively in tires, batteries, and accessories don't provide the same range of opportunities, he said.

Historically, dealers have liked to groom auto technicians, said Mary Lynn Alvarino, director of operations for the 200-member Automotive Dealers Association of Greater Philadelphia.

But after the worst 12 months in automotive-sales history, she said, "they're laying off their own employees."

The Philadelphia School District used grant money to preserve student co-ops at 14 dealerships this summer, she said.

In addition to repair skills, co-ops teach students to "go to work and be on time," said Kevin Mazzucola, executive director of the dealers association. No matter what's going on in the economy, he added, "there's always a place for a good service technician."

Ken Kehler, 18, and Niko Ambrosia, 17, have chosen to spend their high school senior years at Gloucester County Institute of Technology in GCC's Ford ASSET program. The secondary school and community college have a joint agreement.

They'll take English, math, physics, first aid, sociology, and computer literacy, as well as intensive automotive technology. If all goes well, they'll have completed a year of college when they graduate from high school in the spring.

In high school, the two worked mostly on older used cars.

"It was, 'Here's a problem; go to it,' " Kehler said. At GCC, "they're all newer cars. It's preparing us for real work. It's diagnostic."

In a couple of weeks, Kehler, of Deptford, will go to Echelon Ford in Stratford to begin his first co-op. Ambrosia, of Williamstown, will work at Delsea Motor Co. in Clayton.

Steve Alper, owner of Alper Automotive Inc. in Northeast Philadelphia, knows the advantage of hands-on learning. He graduated in 1994 from the GCC program.

Dealership co-ops can be "really good as long as they don't use you as cheap labor - a sweep-the-shop kind of job," he said.

Alper got a technician job at the trucking company where he worked in college, then moved to an auto dealership. He opened his shop in 2000.

He would like to take on a student, but business "is slower than it used to be," he said. Alper just downsized by one, leaving a staff of two full-time technicians, himself, and a secretary.

Though he was trained on Fords, Alper said, the knowledge he acquired applied to all makes.

"All cars are basically the same - same principles, same parts," he said. "It's unbelievable how much technology there is now. Even a cheap car has six computers talking to it."

Kelly, the Ford field-service engineer, said computer software has replaced shop manuals, and a laptop is as important as a socket wrench.

Associate degrees give students entrée to four-year programs in automotive management, such as the one at Pennsylvania State University-Williamsport, he said.

"It used to be that you could graduate from high school having had a shop class and get a job, but now, unless you have an education from a reputable school, you're not really going to be able to advance in the business," said Holman's Harris.

Contact staff writer Cynthia Henry at 856-779-3970 or chenry@phillynews.com.