Nelson Piquet Jr. chose to accentuate the positive after losing his chance of a potential first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race to a pit speed violation at Rockingham Speedway.
Piquet won the pole position in Saturday's qualifying and appeared poised to make the Good Sam Roadside Assistance 200 a runaway, leading 103 of the first 123 laps. But a longer pit stop during the race's third caution period bumped him back to fifth place.
He worked his way back up to second place behind race winner Kasey Kahne, but was nabbed for speeding on the 176th lap, during the race's final yellow flag. The penalty made him the last truck on the lead lap, leaving Piquet 12th for the final restart.
"We had lost position on one pit stop and I was trying to recover it back on another pit stop. So we speeded a little bit trying to find the limits," the former F1 racer admitted. "Obviously, it wouldn't have felt that bad if we weren't in that position."
Piquet's penalty was for being too fast exiting the pits – which was no easy feat considering he owned the first pit stall as the pole winner. One stall in front of him was left vacant for TV's use, which added some real estate for Piquet ahead of the final pit-road timing line.
Piquet gained two spots to take sixth place in the points standings after his second top-10 finish in three races this season.