As soon as Kelly Bires climbed from the No. 47 Clorox Ford Saturday for the last time this season, he quickly walked around the car to make sure all the fenders were straight and in one piece.

Despite finishing the Ford 300 without any damage, Bires left the Homestead-Miami Speedway frustrated by another finish that failed to match the effort from his Wood Brothers/JTG Racing team. Although he raced among the Top 10 most of the night, a late caution flag caught the team in the middle of a green-flag pit sequence. That took him out of contention and relegated him to a 20th-place finish.

The yellow flag came out less than two laps after Ambrose completed his stop. He re-started a lap down, but raced back to the lead lap at the finish.

Bires moved into the driver’s Seat in the Clorox Ford Fusion in June. He had eight Top-20 finishes, including four in the final five races of the Busch Series season.

Bires will return in the No. 47 Clorox Ford next year.

WHAT THE TEAM HAS TO SAY

Kelly Bires, driver of the No. 47 Clorox Ford Fusion:
“We had a good long run race car and we knew that in practice and that’s what we worked on,” he said. “It showed after about 20 laps and we were turning some pretty fast times on the racetrack. We could have had a Top-5 finish easy tonight, but one lap got us. We pitted and gained spots on pit road when the yellow flag came out and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

“We held out as long as we could before we pitted. You take a chance in running out of fuel, knowing that you have to pit anyway. The caution got us and put us a lap down, then we were on the tail end of the longest line. We were a fifth-place car if the race could have stayed green, but there was nothing we could do.”