Keller claims third-place finish in car chief's absence
By Lee Montgomery - Associate Editor
Sunday, July 20, 2008
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Scott Boehm / Getty Images
MADISON, Ill. – Jason Keller and his CJM Racing team were missing a big part of their team in Saturday night’s Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250 Nationwide Series race. Literally.
Steve “Big Guy” Helwig, the car chief on Keller's No. 11 entry, was at home in the Charlotte, N.C., area after getting chemotherapy treatment for leukemia. The treatments went well last week, and Helwig will likely return to the race track for this week’s event at O’Reilly Raceway Park.
In Helwig’s absence Saturday, Keller drove CJM’s No. 11 Chevrolet to a third-place finish.
“We’ve missed Big Guy a lot,” Keller said. “He went through his treatment this past week and did well. We’re going to keep our fingers crossed and say a lot of prayers that he’ll be back at ORP. But we miss him, there’s no doubt. There’s some things from where we’re practicing that he’s the leader.
“He’s been coming to work even when he was getting his chemo treatment this week. He was working half-days, which is just crazy. Although he wasn’t here, as soon as I get out of here, I’m going to call my wife and call him, too. It’s a lot of his hard work, so it means a lot.”
The finish was Keller’s best since coming home second for ppc Racing at Chicagoland Speedway in 2004.
“We started off extremely bad,” Keller said. “One of the things we’ve been trying to do the last couple of weeks it to be able to adjust on our race cars. [Crew chief] Todd [Gordon] did a great job adjusting on the car. … We really got it pretty good there at the end. It’s so much fun racing when you can pass cars and be aggressive.”
- Mentioned Drivers:
- Jason Keller
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