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:
“But he answered his father, Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 15:29,30.
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)