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Eli Vastbinder was unsuccessful in two attempts over the weekend.

Kaique Pacheco did not compete in Tucson, and is scheduled to start his season in St. Louis, MO.  He remains in Brazil and will return the week of St. Louis.

Eli Vastbinder will be looking to improve on his 2023 30^th place UTB standings finish and he’ll do so starting in Tucson as a member of the 2023 PBR Teams Champions Texas rattlers.  A mid-Season trade brought Eli to Texas and it couldn’t have gone better for him.

Kaique Pacheco will start his season in St. Louis, MO, the second stop of the new season.  He is currently in Brazil and will return the week of St. Louis.  Plenty of motivation for Kaique this year coming off of a forgettable finish to the 2023 season due to injury, which carried through the PBR Teams season with Nashville.

Post-Race Quote: Grant, I want to tell you, both Ben Rhodes and Rich Lusches thanked you for racing them clean in that last part of the race. As you replay the last lap, what could you have done different?

“I don’t know. It was just the original green-white-checkered there where we went four wide; Ben gassed it up there on the bottom and drove us and the No. 19 and tore up our truck and we had to restart from 22nd. That’s kind of what ended our run. You know, obviously we got close there at the end. I don’t know, maybe if he didn’t have such a run down the back straightaway, but I needed to get under him to make that pass.

Yeah, I don’t know. It’s a shame that the championship came down to a race like that with 15 green-white-checkers there or whatever it was right there with 30 laps extra. I feel like we did everything we could to win this race there and kind of got used up right there. Championship racing, and it’s just incredibly unfortunate to end GMS Racing like this. I really felt like we had that championship in grasp, and to be honest with you, I don’t know if I would have done anything different. Just wasn’t meant to be.”

Post-Race Quote: You’re going to race for a championship in Phoenix! There was a lot going on today, you had the penalty early on, but you guys were able to overcome that. I saw a lot of hugs here, how’s this one feel?

“It feels great. These guys deserve to be running for a championship in Phoenix. I’m pretty disappointed in our execution, you can’t make mistakes against these guys. We were blessed to have a second opportunity. Jeff made some great calls on the truck; the truck was as good as it was going to be on those last two stints. That was all we had. We could have thrown a Hail Mary and maybe that would have given us a shot at winning, but he made the right call to race for a championship. Congratulations to all these guys, I really wanted this for Mike Beam, Maury Gallagher, Ron Booth, everybody at Champion Power Equipment, and Jeff Hensley. All these guys deserve to race for a championship so we are incredibly blessed and thankful that the Lord blessed us with this opportunity and hopefully we make the most of it in two weeks.”

Post-Race Quote: “We didn’t have the speed we needed in our Champion Power Equipment Chevy today. It wasn’t for a lack of effort though. These GMS guys have given me a great truck at a lot of these races, but we just missed something here today. Before we had the damage we struggled a little bit. I feel like we always worked ourselves to about middle of the pack. Right there in the middle of the storm. In most of those instances we don’t have anywhere we could go. At one instance I went to the middle. I can’t remember who was underneath me. The No. 41 was on top. I was to his left rear tire and the No. 42 cooled down and the No. 41 went with him and I was there and I just darted and got into him. The No. 41 came down but I’m the one that’s stuck in the middle. I don’t know, I feel bad for those guys. Other than that I don’t know what we could’ve done differently. It’s just a struggle. Thank you to these GMS guys for fighting. I think a lot of these guys would’ve called it quits and I don’t know how many times we were on the D.V.P. clock but this thing is tore up from every angle. Thirteen is almost like a win. We know we got our work cut out for us when we go to Homestead. We know our mile-and-a-half package is great. We just got to have a great performance in the next few weeks at Miami. We’re still alive in this championship.”

Post-Race Quote: Grant Enfinger is opening up round two of the playoffs with his third place finish; you said that you wanted to come into this one aggressive, is that what we saw displayed from the No. 23 tonight?

“Yeah, I feel like overall, we executed almost to the best of our ability. I feel like maybe I gave up one point coming to the end of that first stage, but overall, Jeff made some really great adjustments. We weren’t really all that great in practice, but he made it better towards the end of practice. When we fired off for the start of the race I thought we were pretty good. The last, the only set of tires didn’t really like it quite as much there. I wish we could have contended for the win, but overall I feel like we got all we could get out of our Champion Power Equipment Chevrolet. Lacking a little bit to contend for a win, we always want to fight for a win and we couldn’t do that, but I think overall we executed well on pit road. Tyler Monn made some great calls. Overall, I’m not happy, but I’m satisfied.”