Eventful can hardly describe the chain of events for Donny Lia this weekend as he made his first run at The World Center of Racing in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series NextEra Energy Resources 250. But events off the track turned out to be more significant than what happened at the track.

The New York native was solid on both practice session posting the 12th best time in Thursday morning’s practice runs. Thursday night Donny qualified the No. 21 SS Green Light Racing Dodge in the 21st position with a lap of 51.59 seconds, not quite what the Butch Miller led team had hoped for. “Well… the Crew Chief screwed up there, we knew the truck had a twenty in it (51.20 second lap) but we tried to make it go a teen (51.10) and we went too far and slowed it down. We’ll be good in race trim tomorrow night.”

Donny’s eventful weekend took a new direction when he received a call that his fiancé Nancy was going into labor. So he quickly boarded a plane and head home to New York to enjoy the birth of his first child. He would have to give up his first ever start at Daytona International Speedway.

Named after his father, Dominick Anthony was born on Friday Feb 12th, weighing in at 7 lbs. 12 oz.

As fate would have it for Donny, the rains continued all day on Friday in Daytona and NASCAR officials postponed the race to Saturday evening. Almost as if it was planned, Donny was able to fly back to Florida on Saturday afternoon just in time to make his Daytona debut.

Lia would have to start from the rear of the field because he missed the drivers meeting on Friday night, but that did not affect the Lia or the SS Green Light team. At the drop of the green flag, Donny moved steadily and quickly though the draft reaching 20th spot by lap ten and fifteenth spot on lap twenty. On lap 30 Donny had pushed the No. 21 into the top-ten and look as if he would be able to position himself for a top finish.

All the enthusiasm of the weekend came to a quick halt on lap 31 when Ricky Carmichael got together with Ron Hornaday instigating a ten-truck pileup. With no where to go, Lia smashes into Elliot Sadler in front of him severely damaging the nose, radiator and front of his SS Green Light Racing Dodge ending his eventful week-end and ruining his Daytona debut, relegating him to 30th place in the final rundown.

“I really hate it for the guys who built this truck and have to fix it. There is just so many hours that these trucks can be worked on, so when you’re fixing one that’s time your not spending making them go faster.” Lia explained. “I know the guys on the 23 GunBroker.com team built this truck and they did a great job.”

“The truck was fantastic tonight, I could go anywhere I wanted and it would suck right up to the truck in front of me,” he added. “I want to thank Bobby Dotter for giving me this opportunity, he worked hard to help me land this ride and I can really see the potential in this team.”

“I’m looking forward to going to Atlanta in a few weeks, I’ll be in the 07 there and I know the SS Green Light guys have a good truck they are getting ready for me.”

Lia flew back to New York immediately following the race to be with his fiancé and new son.

NASCAR Camping World Truck Series

Daytona Int'l Speedway

February 13, 2010

Donny Lia – No. 21

SS Greenlight Racing

It's An Eventful Daytona Debut for Donny Lia

Donny Lia News