PENSACOLA, FL:: Though improving on his personal-best Snowball Derby finish was the ultimate goal, polesitter Hunter Robbins did the next best thing: matched it.

Coming into the race with the backing of the race team that bears his namesake rather than that of past Derby champion Ronnie Sanders for the first time since the two parted, matching that fourth-place best effort in the event summed up to a “really great weekend” for Robbins.

“I really enjoyed this weekend,” Robbins said. “I pretty much am the only one who works on my car, keeps it up, and then I have a good group of guys who have stuck with me for the past three or four years. It’s really cool to be really competitive and to have a shot to win, but that’s just what I expect.”

Those expectations to be competitive for the win weren’t completely met for Robbins, as the driver said that the team struggled with pit stops all day. Pit-road struggles ended up being the bane of the No. 18 team’s Derby effort, as the pole-sitting car’s movement through the field was fairly up and down due to various misfortunes throughout the race.

“It’s just kind of part of these races,” Robbins said. “You bring in a crew and sometimes you get some guys who haven’t really worked together and some who have.

“But it was really disappointing — extremely disappointing, I guess, because I had such a good car and these races really don’t come often, and you really just have to take advantage of them when they come.”

Taking advantage of the situation was exactly what Robbins did, though not in the exact way he had planned. For the driver of the No. 18, the first 200 laps of the race “weren’t very fun,” with a subpar race car and an involvement in a caution during the early stages of the race.

“We slowed down to avoid [the caution], and the car behind us just ran all over us and spun us out,” Robbins said. “That almost really set us back for the entire race because we came in almost last to take our tires.”

After getting off of the first set of tires on which Robbins said that car wasn’t very good on and after making a few adjustments, the race looked to be turning around for the team. However, Robbins said that his chances against eventual winner John Hunter Nemechek were somewhat bit by lapped traffic at the end portion of the race.

“[From the] middle of race to the end, we had one of the better cars out there, for sure — it showed late in the race,” Robbins said. “John Hunter got around me, but we were right back there with him. The caution came out there and it was getting ready to be a pretty good deal there — pretty exciting, I guess.”

Robbins’ hope for an exciting finish — at least, to be involved in the battle for the win — was marred by a final pit-road difficulty. Falling from the runner-up spot to ninth for the restart, Robbins made a last-ditch effort to overcome the stumble in the final 10 laps.

With a few more than ten laps, though, Robbins thinks that the outcome of this year’s Snowball Derby could have been slightly different — pit-road struggles or not.

“We still overcame [the pit-road setback], drove back to like 5th or so, and then the next series of pit stops, kind of lost a lot of spots and then drove back to the lead,” Robbins said. “If we would have had a couple more laps, I think our car was a little bit better than the 8 [of Nemechek] on the short run, but on the long run we were really, really equal.”

The full post-race video interview with Hunter Robbins can be viewed below: