Recent Years
In 2001, Setzer joined Morgan-Dollar Motorsports. In his first year with the team he won two poles, one race, and finished ninth in points. After another quiet year in 2002, things started improving, as Setzer won three race in 2003. After failing to win a race in 2006, he departed Morgan Dollar to join Spears Motorsports. In 2007, Setzer won the City of Mansfield 250 at Mansfield Motorsports Speedway after running the entire 250 lap race without a pitstop. The Mansfield victory was his first victory in 41 races, his last coming in the Power Stroke Diesel 200 at O'Reilly Raceway Park on August 1, 2005.
Late in the 2007 season, he parted ways with Spears and raced at New Hampshire for Green Light Racing, and at Las Vegas for Bobby Hamilton Racing. He drove the #18 Dodge Ram Truck to a vicory in the 2008 Kroger 250 at Martinsville. It was Setzer's 18th career win, and BHR's 1st win since Bobby Hamilton Sr. won in Martinsville in 2005. After BHR shut down at the end of 2008, Setzer found himself out of a job entering the season.
Setzer began the 2009 Truck Series season driving one race apiece for GunBroker Racing and Fast Track Racing Enterprises, before being named the driver for MRD Motorsports. He had two second-place finishes and was in the top-ten in points before he was forced to miss six races due to sponsorship issues. Setzer also returned to K-Automotive in the Nationwide Series, driving the #96 ConelyAuto.com Dodge on a part-time basis before moving to the other team car, #92.
During the 2010 Aaron's 312 Nationwide Series race in Talladega on the last lap Setzer, drving the #92, was involved in a huge crash which sent him up the wall and into the catch fence. He then hit a fence pole and spun around, and with a fiery explosion, landed on all four wheels. Setzer was okay after the crash.
Dennis did not have a full-time ride to begin 2011. In March, he was named a substitute driver for Brian Keselowski in the Sprint Cup Series, who was recovering from gallbladder surgery. Setzer successfully qualified for the Bristol race, his first Cup series event since 1998. He went on to finish 38th, the team's best finish to date. Brian Keselowski has since returned to action. After several weeks, Setzer began driving the cars for Jay Robinson Racing in the Nationwide Series. Setzer also attempted a handful of races with ML Motorsports and R3 Motorsports. As of late October, his best finish of the year has been 18th at Road America. Setzer was to attempt the fall cup race at Martinsville, but qualifying was rained out and the field was set by owner's points, and Setzer and his K-Automotive Motorsports team went home.
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.... In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)