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Darlington II: Bill Elliott preview
NASCAR-WCS
2002-08-28
BILL ELLIOTT NO. 9 DODGE DEALERS INTREPID R/T
RUNNING AT DARLINGTON
"Darlington can be tough. It helps if you've been around it a few times. We've had some good runs there in the Dodge. I don't know what it is, but I always seem to have better runs at the Southern. You always hear about how abrasive the track can be that's why tires are important here. They fall off so fast because of that. It really helps if you know how to conserve them. I'm sure that will be important this weekend as well."
SOUTHERN 500
"I want to win any race, it doesn't matter where it is. This race is one of the bigger ones on the circuit, but like I said after Indy, no one race is more important than another. We just have to keep doing what we're doing. If we do that, then we'll continue to be competitive and put ourselves in position to win races."
WINNING THE MILLION
"It was a pretty big deal back then. It was the first time that it was done and that created a lot of excitement about it. Things got a little out of hand leading up to the race but we kind of got them under control by the time we got to Darlington, the media and all the attention. We just tried to concentrate on the car and doing what we needed to do. It is definitely a highlight in my career and one people still seem to talk about."
POSSIBILITY OF RUNNING UNDER LIGHTS AT DARLINGTON
"Everyone seems to like racing under the lights. They're always big races for the fans, just like Bristol. Doing it during the holiday weekend would create a lot of excitement I'm sure."
RACE NOTES
* Bill Elliott and the No. 9 Dodge Squad will bring the Dodge Intrepid R/T that qualified and finished 2nd at Dover this year.
* This Sunday Bill Elliott will celebrate his 50th visit to one of his best tracks, Darlington Raceway. After 49 appearances at the track, Elliott leads all active drivers with five Bud Poles and is tied with Jeff Gordon for the most victories (five) among active drivers. He also leads all modern-era drivers in top-fives (20) and top 10s (32) at the track. Elliott's 9.16 average finish at Darlington is best among all active drivers.
Darlington II: Kevin Harvick preview
NASCAR-WCS
2002-08-28
Darlington Raceway, the 44th competitor.
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (August 26, 2002) - This speedway this spring, Kevin Harvick whittled his way to his first top-ten of the season, taking away the third position. This go-around, things are a little different. The 2001 Busch Series Champion has all but dominated the latter-half season point standings and is chiseling his way toward a top-ten finish in the NASCAR Winston Cup Owners Point Standings. Having accumulated six top-tens in the last seven races, there's little that has derailed the No. 29 GM Goodwrench Service team.
The 1.366-mile Darlington (S.C.) Raceway presents tight racing conditions and is conceivably the hardest race to race, because it's not just the other 42 cars you need to worry about. Your toughest competitor is the racetrack itself.
The track known as "too tough to tame" conjures up fear for some drivers. The "Lady in Black," sends almost half of the 43-car race field home with bent fenders or blown motors. But, for Harvick, the tenacity of the track - its unrelenting viciousness - is something that sparks his animated nature. It is, perhaps, why the Southern 500 is one on a list of "Most Wanted Wins" by the whole NASCAR Winston Cup field.
Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 29 GM Goodwrench Service Chevrolet Monte Carlo, speaks tradition, racing with a 44th competitor, and laps around the Darlington Raceway:
Who cares about the Lady in Red when you have one wearing Black. "I want to win Darlington because it's so hard to drive. It's so hard to get your car set up right. Any place that has a long list of the sport's greats winning or dominating there - you want to be added to the list.
"We're on this roll right now. These next races can make or break you, and a lot of it has to do with luck. We're short track racing for a while here. We came through Bristol extremely well, and now we have Darlington, Richmond, and New Hampshire. All of these are places where you can run really well and finish really bad because of someone else's mistake. This is where you'll see the shake up in points, and we're just trying to get on the good side of it all."
New Rule: 44 competitors instead of 43. "Your biggest competition is the track. You can't go too hard and you can't just ride around with the top down. You have to know your car and know whether it'll give in the turn or plow down the frontstretch. If you know how the track is going to behave with your car, you're golden. That's the biggest way you make it past the rest of the 42 guys out there.
"Goodyear has these tires now that last forever. But Darlington will still run them tougher than any other place. It's by far the hardest on them. I don't know if anyone could ever make a piece of rubber hard enough to take on Darlington. It used to be stickers (new tires) wouldn't last very long. But, if you had hit a late race caution right, the guy with the newer tires will win. He'd be that much faster."
The Harvick Driving Experience: Let's take a lap. "You take your laps with the pace car and you drive off past the start finish line into turn one. It's really narrow. Very narrow. You just let off (the gas) and then you need to get right back on it. You drive it up to the wall and ride it as close to the wall as you can. This would be where drivers get that famed 'Darlington Stripe.' While you're next to the wall, you ride three-quarters of the way through the corner. Then, you breathe out of the gas and get the car pointed to turn two. Coming off of turn two it's like shootin' the hole, riding up next to the wall down the back straight-away. Into turn three, you get back in it (the gas) and drive the car to the bottom. And then it slides all the way to the top. You get on the gas, come off of the corner of turn four. You're right up against the wall the whole way around. They must have to repaint that wall everyday we're there.
"It's about comfort I think. You ride up against the wall the whole time for 400 miles, That can be unnerving. It takes a lot of endurance - like any other track, but it also is constant concentration on not only what the field is doing, but how close you are to that wall. It's hard to do. With Darlington, the only paved surface you can drive on is two and a half cars wide. Everyone will hit the wall at least once or twice. It's just a matter of how hard and when you do it.
"A good handling racecar is the most important aspect. If you've got something that's loose or tight, you're not going to make it. You'll get into other people or the wall a bunch. Who ever drops off the least and runs the longest is going to be your race winner."
Darlington II: Tony Stewart preview
NASCAR-WCS
2002-08-28
Tony Stewart
Back to old school.
ATLANTA (Aug. 26, 2002) - Labor Day weekend typically marks the end of summer and the beginning of school for many a child across the United States. Therefore it's only fitting that the 53rd running of the Southern 500 at the historic Darlington (S.C.) Raceway marks a return to old school racing for those competing in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series.
Darlington is the oldest track on the 23-venue Winston Cup tour, having run its first race back in 1950 in what was then called the Grand National Series. Much has changed around the 1.366-mile egg-shaped oval since then, but the tough and gritty layout remains virtually the same since Johnny Mantz took the first checkered flag Darlington ever offered.
For Stewart, a 31-year-old throwback to the days of A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti and Parnelli Jones - drivers who would race anything, anywhere - Darlington represents old school racing, where driver feel and the ability to adapt to ever-changing track conditions reign superior.
With the abrasive track surface attacking tires like a cheese-grader, racing at Darlington means constantly driving an ill-handling race car. After 10 laps, whatever grip your tires once had is no more, and the seat-of-the-pants feel drivers are ordained with is all that's left.
For Stewart, that's an advantage. When not piloting his #20 Home Depot Pontiac or attending one of his many sponsor appearances, Stewart is racing somewhere. Whether it be on dirt or on pavement, the various cars wheeled by Stewart in various racing environments make the Indiana native a chameleon of sorts, easily adapting to his latest surroundings.
It's the best practice one can get for racing at Darlington.
You just left one tough race track in Bristol (Tenn.) and you're heading to another one in Darlington. How similar are the two tracks when it comes to their physical nature?
"Bristol is tougher physically because you have less time when you're on the straightaways to relax. You almost have no time, really. But at Darlington, the straightaways are long enough to where you can relax a little bit. But don't get me wrong, it's still a tough track."
How tough is this span of races - Bristol, Darlington, Richmond (Va.), Loudon (N.H.), Dover (Del.) - before the relative reprieve of Kansas City?
"For us, it's the best stretch of the schedule. It's tough for the race teams and the crew, but for me personally, this is one of the stretches in the schedule that I really enjoy."
What makes this part of the schedule work to your advantage?
"It gets hot and slippery. The cars start sliding around a lot more, and that seems to play into my hands. It's something that I'm comfortable with, whereas some other drivers might not be."
Do you credit your extra-curricular racing to the success that you've historically enjoyed during this stretch of the season?
"It certainly hasn't hurt me any. I feel like all the stuff that I did in the past to get me to this level definitely helped me, and I really believe that the racing I do now outside of Winston Cup continues to help, especially now when the tracks are hot and slick."
Do you feel this part of the schedule is where other teams start dragging?
"I think so, and this is the part of the year where if you sense that, you can really capitalize on it by preying on the weak, so to speak."
Despite the outcome of this year's spring Darlington race, do you feel that was your best run yet at Darlington?
"I believe it equals our best run. We got ourselves in a situation where we were on four fresh tires and a lot of the other guys only had two fresh tires, and we were able to take advantage of that. But with the wreck, it just didn't work out."
(Stewart had never led a lap at Darlington until this year's spring race, where he led a total of seven laps before a spinning Buckshot Jones collected him coming off turn two on lap 226. With his #20 Home Depot Pontiac already damaged, Stewart was then T-boned by the Dodge of Jimmy Spencer, a hit that sent Stewart to the hospital for overnight observation. - Ed.)
You're coming up on your eighth career race at Darlington. With the age of the track, the various tire compounds you've brought there, the advancing technology of the cars, has the track changed much since you first raced there in March of 1999?
"I don't think the track has ever changed. It's still just as tough as it ever was. Goodyear can bring any tire they want there, but the surface will still tear it up. It's not because of a lack of effort on Goodyear's part, it's just that Darlington has a very abrasive surface that's worn out. And anytime you have a track that's worn out like Darlington is, it's virtually impossible to bring a tire that is going to live. It's just a tough race track, but that's what makes it a lot of fun too."
Does Darlington's track surface seem to change drastically from the time you were there in March to the time you go there in late August/early September?
"It seems like the track is a lot hotter and gives up a lot more grip in August. But that track has always been a tire management type of race track, so you're still going to have to worry about saving your tires. But if the tires are a little harder, like they've been this year, then it's easier to do that."
Darlington pays the same amount of points as any other track on the circuit, but because of its history, it seems to be a race you want to win badly. Is that a fair assessment?
"I'd love to win the Southern 500. When I'm watching TV and I see an old race from Darlington, I'm able to see the history of Darlington and the Southern 500, along with all of the greats who have run there and won there and crashed out of the joint. There's some deep history there, and the race fans down there are some of the most dedicated race fans in our series. That makes it really enjoyable to run well, and hopefully win there."
Do you hold the Southern 500 in the same regard as the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 because of its history?
"You learn a lot about the Southern 500 by watching Speed Channel and seeing all of the classic races. It was kind of like the appreciation I got for Daytona (Fla.) with the 500. Everybody knows it's the biggest race of the year, but to see its history, you realize why it's such a spectacle. It's the same with the Southern 500. You see it's history and you realize what a special event it is, and it makes you want to win it that much more."
Is Darlington the one track on the Winston Cup circuit where you feel you have to work the hardest?
"It's one of the tracks where we seem to work the hardest. The way the tires fall off and as narrow as the track is - it's hard to pass. So, you've got to get your car driving well to be able to pass. You don't want to use up your tires too early in a run. It's definitely one of the harder tracks on the circuit, but there are a lot of hard tracks on our schedule."
Are there different lines that you can run at Darlington?
"The way the tires fall off and the way that you have to change your driving style to compensate for what the tires lack at the end of a run, you'll end up running different lines. You've got to change your driving style each lap - change where you're lifting, how much you're braking, how much you're on the throttle. Some guys from the beginning of a run will race right up against the wall just because that's where their car feels good. It's not so much as the run goes on that you get closer to the wall, it's more dependent on how your car is handling. For instance, my Home Depot Pontiac may start up there, but there might be another guy who starts his run at the bottom of the track."
Darlington II: Dodge Motorsports - Bill Davis Racing
NASCAR-WCS
2002-08-27
WARD BURTON (No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge Intrepid R/T)
NOTE: Burton is the defending champion of the Mountain Dew Southern 500. He also won the 2000 spring race at the 1.366-mile egg-shaped oval. The 2002 Daytona 500 winner, Burton also won this season at New Hampshire in the Bill Davis Racing Dodge. He holds the qualifying record of 173.797 mph at Darlington set March 22, 1996. Burton finished 37th Saturday night at Bristol and ranks 27th in the NASCAR Winston Cup Standings with 12 races remaining on the 2002 schedule.
"I don't know how good I am at Darlington. I've been lucky to have good race cars there. We've been able to capitalize on two of the events, but there's been at least three others where I felt like we had the car to win the race. We've kind of got to avenge ourselves a little bit from the spring race. We got caught in a wreck when the 20 car got into the 44. We were running fifth then. We had just got the car pretty good. We were as good as anybody on the long runs. The first 20-25 laps, we'd get out-sprinted a little bit. We're going there with the same car, and we're going to work really hard to get it turning right so we can hopefully be a threat.
"There's always a lot of sand blowing around at Rockingham and Darlington. The asphalt doesn't stay like regular asphalt for very long. It gets real rocky. A lot of the blacktop between the rocks starts disappearing and that creates a very course condition that the tires wear on. There's no tire you can build that's not going to wear under those conditions. The new tire they've come out with makes it even tougher because the damn thing doesn't want to turn with the way the tire construction is. That's a challenge we have at every track. The reason Darlington is so much more challenging is because we run six inches away from the wall in both corners. You can overshoot a little bit and that's when you get in the wall. Everybody in this garage has had that Darlington stripe, and they're going to have another one before it's over with. Actually both races we won there we had a stripe on both sides of the car. It's all right to get a little stripe. It's not all right to get a big one. Most of the grip is close to the wall, so you're going to nip it a little bit every now and then with the right rear quarter.
"I think you've got to like Darlington. There is a place where I know, and I might not get there and be able to run there in the first 300 miles, and it's hard to sit there and visually see, but when I get in that groove and get my car where it's working, my line changes. Even if it's only a couple of feet in each corner, that couple of feet adds to a lot of mph to me, but I've got to have a car to allow me to do that. I can't go into detail what it is, and it would be hard for me to explain it. I know I'm in the zone when I'm there, and it definitely makes a difference. You gain a ton of time in both corners. You gain a ton of time coming off turn two and you gain a ton of time from the middle of three to the exit of four when I can get my car to do what I need it to do there.
"We haven't varied a whole lot on the setup from race to race. We've varied a little bit. Actually in the 500 last year, I was trying too hard for the pole and we hit the wall and had to rebuild the whole car. We didn't get that car right until the last 75 laps, and it was going that way again last spring. We didn't qualify well and we got in the top 10 and then in the top five and then we got in a wreck. We were just starting to make the kind of adjustments that the car was starting to come around to us.
"It's pretty simple. It's the same as everywhere else. You've got to give and take. You've got to work hard to be there at the end of the race. You run laps and learn. You race the race track and not the competitors and you don't get too involved with a one-lap battle because you've got a 500-mile battle.
"If you've got 20 laps on your tires and somebody behind you doesn't at Darlington, he's got you beat. I don't think there's any way around that. At the same time, a lot of that kind of philosophy is out the window this year. Our car at New Hampshire was better on 60-lap tires than it was on new tires. At Darlington, the way the tires wear out, if a guy is pretty good and he's got four new tires on, it would probably be physically impossible to beat him unless the lapped cars or something got in the way.
"I got pushed high one time in three and four at New Hampshire last time. They had just blown the track and luckily we were able to miss the wall. I know they've been trying to do some things to the New Hampshire track, but to me, the track has always been like that. I think it's been like that since day one. For a short track race, we hit a ton up there. The tragedy that has happened there proves it. I don't think there's any question. I'm not going to sit here and try to bash the race track. I think the Bahres are great people, but they need to work on some areas up there. They've been talking about it for years. We just increased the groove to the apron last time with the new paving. Taking that sealer off like they're doing right now as I understand it, I don't see where that's the answer at all. A lot of people are smarter than I am about that stuff, but no banking and a flat one-mile race track, it's pretty much a dragstrip and then you stop in the middle of the corner. That's the problem.
"We're either battling for the win or we're trying to stay on the lead lap this season. There's no in between. I have not been able to give the proper input about the cars on some of the bigger racetracks. The team has not been able to have a baseline as to where to start at, and that gets us too far off. Short tracks, we can see what we need to do and a lot of times make good adjustments. Tommy Baldwin (crew chief) and I and all the engineers and the chassis guys and the motors guys, it's every one of them. Tommy and I have got to figure out how to get back to a baseline. If we're a 20th-place car, then we need to be a 20th-place car and not turn into a 40th-place car. I think in some areas we need some help to figure it out.
"We've tried a lot of stuff from week to week. A lot of stuff has worked and a lot of stuff hasn't worked. I think we've been pitiful at some places and we've gotten off the baseline. It used to be we could be horrible the first of the race and make adjustments and come back and run in the top five and have a shot at winning. Very rarely can we do that now. I don't have any answers to it right now.
"We just need to find some consistency somewhere. In '99 we were the most consistent we've ever been and we've steadily gone down consistently since then. We know how to win now. We've just got to get back to running consistent now."
BILL DAVIS (Car owner Bill Davis Racing Dodge Intrepid R/Ts)
"Ward has always been good at Darlington. When he first went down there in a Busch car he ran great. I think that's the first place I ever noticed him. I think he goes into Darlington, and instead of being intimidated by it and dreading it, like some people approach road racing, I think Ward goes in there and like 'man this is a tough place and all my heros ran well here. It takes a really great driver to master this place and not be intimidated by it.' I think he's always accepted it as a challenge, and I know Darlington is one place that John Burton, his daddy, always took the boys when they were real young. On Labor Day and maybe the spring race, too, they went to the race. Ward tells stories about camping out there.
He tells the story about camping out down there a lot. I don't know how old Ward was, but they go camp out. They've got a motor home and John says they ought to build a camp fire. He told the boys to go get some wood. Well, old boy scout Ward is ready. He gets his ax and goes out there and finds some pine trees down one of the roads near the track. He goes out there and chops one down. He drags it back to the motorhome and starts chopping it up and splitting it. John asked him where he got it. I don't think they ever got in trouble for it, but they know about it now.
"I expect to have a car capable of winning the race when Ward Burton is driving at Darlington. I think any time we've ever gone there with Ward we've been in position to win the race. We ran at Bristol with Ward first and ran good all night. With about 100 laps to go there was a big wreck and we ran over somebody's bumper. It poked a hole in the oil cooler and ended our night. We went to Darlington the next week and ran in the top five all day. I think we finished fifth in our second race together. I can't remember us ever going to Darlington and running terrible. I think we've always gone and run well.
"I don't know how you can go week to week and be so radically different and so inconsistent. That's one thing we'd kinda got hold of the past few years. That's why we've finished in the top 10 in points. Mechanical deals have been the craziest things because we've never had problems there. It hasn't been car preparation. Stuff hasn't fallen off the car. We've just had goofy stuff break. We're keep breaking drive shafts, crank shafts and transmissions. We were driving off at Richmond in great shape, certainly with a car that could have been in position to win the race. Then we broke a drive shaft. It's been a pretty goofy deal, and I don't have an explanation. I wish I did. I wish there was an easy fix for it. I think we're addressing it and trying to figure it out the best we can.
"I think the Dodge is a great piece. We've certainly got better cars than we've ever had before. We understand them better and know more about them, so I don't think Dodge has anything to do with our problems. This was the year we thought we were going to break out and really do something better. We certainly got off to an unbelievable start, and then when it didn't go like we thought, I think it was that much harder on us confidence wise, everybody playing on the same team and pulling in the same direction. I think the trouble we had in the first three or four races really hit us hard. It's not enough to win a race. That won't turn things around. I wish it would.
"If you look around this garage, it's terrible, but we're not alone. Bobby Labonte is one of the best racers in here with one of the best racing teams. They're just partially better than we are. Childress' deal is not where it's always been. It's an unusual year. Look at all the trailers up there that haven't even been here in the past and they're up front now.
"For us it's not about winning races. We've won two and that's been amazing we've been able to do that. I think if we just get back on track and knock off some top 10s and top fives, that's what we're looking for.
"We're set for next year. Stay tuned for Tuesday night. We're going to have two Cup teams and a Busch team next year. Scott Wimmer is going to run Busch again. They're so close to winning races. He needs to win races and run for that championship. He's done a pretty good job this year, but another year in Busch won't hurt him. We'll do that and a year from now we'll evaluate things and see where we are. We've got to get our two Cup teams where they need to be before we add a third one."
http://www.fordracing.com/news/?article=20...33&flashcheck=1
BURTON HOPES TO RELIVE PAST DARLINGTON GLORY
8/27/2002
THIS WEEK IN FORD RACING
Darlington, S.C. — Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 99 Citgo Taurus, is one of two active Ford drivers to win the Southern 500, joining teammate Mark Martin in that category in 1999. Burton, who is still looking for his first triumph of 2002, spoke about the annual Labor Day weekend event as part of this week’s NASCAR Winston Cup Series teleconference.
JEFF BURTON
YOU WON BOTH RACES IN ’99 SO YOU MUST FEEL YOUR CHANCES ARE PRETTY GOOD. "It depends on what the weather is, I guess. We have certainly run well at Darlington and it’s certainly one of my favorite race tracks. The last three races there we haven’t run like we’re used to running. It’s kind of one of those race tracks that we used to just love going to and now we’re a little nervous about going to because we used to almost be at the point of being dominant. We led a tremendous amount of laps in all the races we were in. We only ended up winning two of them, but we dominated a lot of those races and ended up having pit stops and stuff happened at the end and we didn’t win ’em. It’s a track we’ve always done well at, but, again, it’s been a challenge for us the last three races and we need to get ourselves back to where we used to be."
THE TRACK DOESN’T CHANGE BUT OTHER THINGS DO THAT CAN AFFECT SUCCESS AT DARLINGTON. "I think the biggest thing that’s changed is the tire. Even though the tire falls off on speed, it doesn’t fall off to the extent that it used to fall off. It doesn’t feel as good when it’s new, but it doesn’t feel as bad when it’s old. What our strength used to be at Darlington is we’d always qualify 10th to 15th, right in there, but on a 50-lap run, the 99 car was really fast all the time. We were never real fast to start, but since the new tire we’ve had trouble getting that back. Aerodynamics are so important now and a lot of things are important now. The stuff that used to work doesn’t work anymore and we’ve had a tough time letting go of what has worked for us in the past because we’ve had so much success in trying to figure out what we need to do in the future."
DOVER, RICHMOND AND LOUDON ARE UP NEXT. DO YOU SET GOALS IN ADVANCE? "We go week to week. We obviously plan farther ahead than that, but when Bristol was over we were thinking about Darlington and when Darlington gets over we think about the next race. That’s how we do it. We try not to look too far ahead. If you map a plan out for four or five races ahead, then what happens is you get complacent. ’We’ll take car 82 and car 74 to this race and that race.’ Well, it may be that you’ve built a better car since then or you’ve just ran a car and had a great run with it so you want to run it again. So, we don’t plan too far ahead, but, certainly, when Darlington is over we’ve got our minds on the next race."
IS IT RACING WHEN CARS JUST BUMP OTHER CARS OUT OF THE WAY? "It’s been like that for a long time at Bristol. That’s what Bristol is, like it or not. You live by the sword and you die by the sword. If you’re willing to knock a guy out of the way to win the race, then you have to understand that the next time you’re leading, the guy behind you has the right to knock you out of the way. That’s how it works. You drive people the way they drive you and you also drive people the way they drive other people. If you see a guy that will constantly knock people out of the way, then you have way less respect for him as far as what you can do with him in the race car. Jeff did what he had to do to win the race, but, at some point, that will come back to him and he’ll lose a race somewhere because of what he did at Bristol. I’m not saying he did wrong, I’m just saying that’s the reality of it and you’ve got to understand that whatever you do has consequences to it."
THERE SEEMS TO BE A LOT MORE REACTION ON TRACK AFTER THAT KIND OF THING. IS NASCAR BEST SERVED BY THAT KIND OF EMOTION? "That could start up a great debate. It certainly gets people talking about the sport. Is it the professionalism that we hope to pull off? No, probably not. Does it make for great TV? It certainly does [laughing]. I was in the race and I wanted to get home Sunday to watch the replay of the race so I could see all the interviews. It is what it is. It makes it exciting and it makes it interesting, but some of it is borderline unprofessional for sure. But it’s a high emotion sport. That’s one of the things I said about Tony Stewart when he was having such a hard time there, it’s high emotion. You try hard and when somebody takes away your opportunity to succeed, it makes you mad and everybody reacts to that differently."
HOW DO YOU GET RID OF YOUR EMOTION? "I don’t know. It changes. One day you get over it pretty quick and the next day, for some reason, it makes you so mad you can’t get over it. We had a really fast race car Saturday night and I got in a wreck that was none of my doing. The driver that I thought had caused the wreck, I saw him after the race and I laughed. We talked about it and it was just Bristol. I wasn’t mad about it at all because it was just Bristol. Then, another time, I can get into a wreck with a guy that it makes me so mad I can hardly stand it. So, I think it really depends on the time and all the stuff leading up to the wreck. I try to catch my breath and realize my kids are watching, but it’s hard to do."
DO YOU FEEL DRIVERS ARE GETTING THEIR SHARE OF THE MONEY OUT THERE AND HOW COME NASCAR DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE THE PROBLEMS BASEBALL DOES? "I’m gonna speak for myself. Roush Racing has treated me fair. They’ve given me raises when they can afford to give me raises and I’ve never had to go to them and ask for more money. When our sponsorship got bigger or we had success, then I saw it in my paycheck as well. So, from a personal standpoint, I’m completely satisfied with the way I’ve been treated from a money standpoint and I have no complaint whatsoever. The NASCAR situation compared to Major League Baseball and the NFL is completely different. We are individually owned. The race teams essentially have no business ties to NASCAR. They operate independently without contract, with the exception of having a contract that says if you’re on the winner’s circle you agree to come to all the races and you get extra money – those kinds of things. But, short of that, we operate independently. So, if I have a problem with the way I’m being treated as a driver, then I have a problem with the guy I work for and not the organization that’s having the races. Generally, when there’s a problem with a car owner and a driver, it’s kept quiet and isn’t out in the public because they don’t want the sponsor to know about it, they don’t want the fans to know about it, they just work it out. We sell our own souvenirs. We’re responsible for our own insurance. We’re responsible for our own retirement plan. We’re responsible for all the expenses incurred and we reap the benefits of all the money made. NASCAR has little bearing on how we run our team and what we’re allowed to do and what we’re not allowed to do from a business standpoint. So when we do have a problem, it’s really not NASCAR’s problem. We could debate whether the teams get the fair share of money from the TV deal. We could debate that for years and I suspect we always will debate it, but, really, you run your company independently from NASCAR, in all honesty. You rely on them to have sponsorships so they can have races and those kind of things, but your team is your team and your relationship with your owner is your relationship with your owner, it’s not NASCAR’s."
AT BRISTOL, THE 31 WAS PENALIZED FOR WHAT HE DID TO THE 48, BUT THE 24 WAS NOT FOR WHAT HE DID TO THE 2. WERE THOSE INCIDENTS DIFFERENT AND SHOULD NASCAR HAVE PENALIZED THEM BOTH THE SAME? "I’m not sure, but I don’t think Rusty Wallace hit anything and I’m pretty sure that the guy Robby Gordon spun out did hit something. So, yeah, I think they’re two totally different things. Robby Gordon had pushed the guy in front of him all the way around the race track for all but two laps under caution and, on top of that, he had all but put me in the wall on the back straightaway coming to get the green before we even got the green. So, I’m sure NASCAR looked at that and said, ’What is this guy doing?’ Then they dropped the green flag and the guy in front of him got spun out and wrecked. I’m pretty sure all those things had a play on it, but, in my opinion, you can’t compare what Jeff Gordon did to Rusty to what Robby Gordon did to the 48 car because the 48 car wrecked and Rusty didn’t."
HOW TOUGH IS TURN 2 AT DARLINGTON? "Turn 2 is certainly an interesting corner because it’s real fast. The entrance to Turn 2, it isn’t like most race tracks where Turn 1and Turn 2 are hooked together and how you do in Turn 1 determines how you do getting off the corner. This race track almost has a little straightaway between Turn 1 and Turn 2, so you’re approaching Turn 2 at a high rate of speed, then you have to make another turn to get off the corner. It’s a very difficult corner, but it’s not as hard as Turn 4. Turn 2 looks exciting and it’s faster in turn two, but, really, the hardest corner at Darlington is Turn 4."
CAN YOU ASSESS THE OVERALL PERFORMANCE OF ROUSH RACING THIS YEAR? "There’s not one thing that we’ve done that’s made our teams better. We have continued to work together with an effort to make all the teams better. There is a tremendous amount of cohesiveness and willingness to work together in the shop. Roush Racing is a nice place to be right now. We’ve got great employees. We’ve got a lot of desire. We’ve got a good group of drivers that all get along. We have everything from a real experienced driver to a guy that has very little experience and it’s just a fun place to be right now. There’s a lot of excitement around Roush Racing and I think that breeds more excitement. I can’t really speak to why the teams are running better other than we have just kept working. Specifically, with the 99 team, we’ve run great since May. I won’t apologize to anybody for how we’ve run since May, but we’ve not gotten the finishes we should have gotten. Since May, I think you could make a case that we’ve been the strongest team at Roush, but our finishes don’t indicate that."
WHAT MAKES DARLINGTON ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE TRACKS? "First of all, I love the history of our sport. I have a lot of respect for what Bobby Allison did and what the generation before him did. What they did made it possible for guys like me to come into this sport and make more money than I should ever make and, on top of that, have so much fun. Darlington, to me, represents all those things. It’s kind of like stepping back in time when you go to Darlington. You go into the offices on the back straightaway and I used to tease Jim Hunter that his office was like a time machine. When you went into his office, you stepped back about 20 years and the whole race track is like that. It doesn’t have the great suites and it doesn’t have all the pretty grass. It doesn’t have all that junk, but what it has is it has a facility that was built a long time ago and it’s put on a lot of great races with all of NASCAR’s great drivers. It’s what racing ought to be. It’s hot, it’s slippery, it’s difficult, it’s what the intent of racing is and I respect all of those things. I have a lot of reverence for it and that’s the biggest reason I like Darlington."
WHY CAN GUYS IN RACING STILL BE SUCCESSFUL IN THEIR MID-40s WHILE GUYS IN OTHER SPORTS CAN’T? "I think there are a lot of reasons. It used to be that your entry into the Winston Cup level was at a later age than it was into the NFL or into the NBA, so the amount of time you can succeed may be close to the same but you started at a later date. Experience matters in this sport. Your reaction time doesn’t slow down the way that your legs slow down when you start reaching 45. There are things that don’t affect you as much compared to a professional basketball player. They talk about Michael Jordan being old and can he do it. Well, he’s not old in our sport because it isn’t about how fast you can run up and down a court, it’s about how well can you drive a car. It’s two totally different things. From a physical standpoint, there’s no reason you can’t drive a car successfully up into the50s. Now, there are things that start happening to you from a psychological standpoint when you start to get older, I think, and you’re not willing to risk it all the way you were perhaps 38 or 40, but there’s no reason from a physical standpoint that you can’t continue to be successful into your 40s."
HOW IMPORTANT IS CONDITIONING AND WHAT DO YOU DO TO STAY IN SHAPE? "I think nutrition and fitness are not something you can mess around with. You’ve got to be prepared when you get to the race track. If you start worrying about being prepared for Darlington on the week of Darlington, you’re about three months too late. I’m certainly no physical specimen of muscle, but I have a lot of endurance. I like to think of myself as kind of like a marathon runner – I’m not real strong and I’m not real big, but I have a tremendous amount of endurance. I think that’s important. The heat doesn’t bother me very much and that’s your biggest enemy. Heat and exposure to g-loads are the two biggest things that drivers have to deal with, so your physical training and physical ability is different than it is with a basketball player or a football player. I’m sure there aren’t many football players that could sit in a car that’s 140 degrees for four hours and be able to concentrate. It’s the type of training you need to do for your sport and that’s what I work real hard at. I try to eat what I need to eat, so I can be good at what it is I do. I try to hydrate myself. I drink a lot of Powerade and a lot of water. During the race I stay hydrated. It’s important to stay hydrated before the race and during the race, but anybody that doesn’t think conditioning is important is behind the times because it’s very important."
CAN YOU CONTRAST WHAT’S EXPECTED AND WHAT’S ALLOWED AT BRISTOL AND THEN A WEEK LATER GOING TO DARLINGTON, WHAT’S ALLOWED THERE? "No one has ever asked me like that, but that’s perhaps the best way to ask. That’s a well thought-out question. You know, Ken Schrader walked down pit road a couple years ago at Bristol and he apologized to everyone before the race for hitting them [laughing]. That’s pretty much the way it is. People do things at Bristol that they don’t do anywhere else and they say, ’Oh, it’s just Bristol.’ What I say is, it’s still a driver’s responsibility. Drivers don’t have to run into each other. When a wreck happens five cars ahead of you and then that accordion effect happens and you get in the back of somebody, that’s Bristol. It’s very hard to pass. You tend to push things a little harder because it’s harder to pass. There’s no room for error, so all those things do make any little mistake that a driver makes have bigger consequences, but I don’t think there’s any doubt about it that driver’s go into Bristol saying, ’I can get by with stuff here that I can’t get by with anywhere else because I can blame it on the race track.’ I don’t think there’s any doubt about it."
DID YOUR EXPERIENCE AT SOUTH BOSTON SPEEDWAY HELP YOU AT ANY CERTAIN TRACK? "I don’t know, that’s an interesting question. I don’t know how racing at South Boston and Orange County helped mold me to make me do some things good and some things not so good. I think the main thing is the competition – not so much where you’re doing it but the competition you’re doing it against. When I was racing there, we had some pretty formidable people that we raced against. If you were gonna beat those guys, you had your work cut out for you. I think the competition is more important than where you’re doing it and I think they taught me a tremendous amount even though they didn’t know they were teaching me. The taught me to lose, they taught me to win, they taught me humility and they taught me a lot of things they didn’t set out to teach. They were just wanting to kick my butt, but when you race and you race against good people, you learn a lot from them and I think that helped me more than anything else."
COMPARE THE DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY AT DARLINGTON WITH OTHER TRACKS. "Bristol is very difficult and Darlington is very difficult. We back up to each other two of the hardest race tracks that we go to all year. The thing about Darlington that I think is misunderstood is that to be successful at Darlington, you have to attack the race track. You can’t be afraid of the race track. Through all of the hype and all the discussion about how difficult it is and how hard it is, you can’t think about it. You’ve got to go and you’ve got to say, ’I’m gonna kick your butt, race track.’ You’ve just got to attack it. You’ve got to not be afraid of it. You’ve got stand in that gas and run hard. It’s one of those things. I heard Darrell Waltrip say on TV that he couldn’t understand how the younger drivers just came here and didn’t respect the place. You have to have respect for it, but you’ve got to attack it. You’ve got to be aggressive and you’ve just got to go after that race track as if it’s any other race track. It’s hard, but if you treat it like it’s hard, you won’t have any success there."
HAVE YOU SEEN A NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE IN JACK ROUSH SINCE THE ACCIDENT? "Jack’s real close to where he was. Certainly, he’s been hurt. Even though he’s tough, he doesn’t want to admit he’s been hurt, so physically he’s not been 100 percent. I think Jack wants to let everybody know he’s OK, so he’s working really, really hard right now to show everybody he’s OK. My relationship with Jack has always been good and I’ve never had a problem in talking to Jack. I’ve always had great luck in spending time with him and explaining things the way I saw it and him explaining things the way he saw it and that hasn’t changed for me. For a while he was different because he was still hurt, but, in all honesty, I think Jack is Jack. That’s why I work for him and I hope he doesn’t change."
WHEN YOU LOOK BACK AT THAT ’97 BATTLE WITH JEFF GORDON. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY? "I’ve watched that tape several times because I got so tired of hearing all the fans saying, ’I wish you would have wrecked the 24 car.’ No, I wouldn’t have done anything different, looking back on it at all. I made the decision that I made for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that I don’t think, if I would have driven in the corner with all four wheels on the flat, which I would have had to do, that neither one of us would have made it through the corner. So, that wasn’t in my best interest – to prove a point so go wreck. I don’t have that personality. The other thing is, I truly believed I was gonna pass him anyway. I was so much faster than he was, but I what I didn’t account for was that when I had gotten so low on the race track, I picked up all the debris on the tires. But there was no doubt in my mind that he had blocked me, but when we came off Turn 2 I was just gonna pass him anyway. So I was looking to avoid contact because I had two more chances to get by him and there was no question in my mind I was going by him because we were that much faster. But when I drove into one, I picked up all that debris on the tires and I couldn’t go anywhere. I didn’t factor that in, but, no, I wouldn’t do anything different today than what I did then."
DO THE YOUNGER DRIVERS HAVE A SENSE FOR THE HISTORY OF DARLINGTON OR IS THE SOUTHERN 500 JUST ANOTHER RACE TO THEM? "I don’t know. I hate to group all the young drivers together. I think some of them probably do and some of them probably don’t. There are some older drivers that don’t care it’s the Southern 500. It’s a personal thing. I don’t know that it’s an era thing or a grouping thing, I think it’s a personal thing. To me it’s special, but to other people I know, that I’m real close to, they could care less about it. For them, it’s just another race but I’d hate to put all the young drivers in one big group and say that none of ’em care about it because I don’t believe that. I think some of them would and some of them wouldn’t."
GETTING BACK TO JACK. HAVE YOU NOTICED ANY CHANGE IN THE DAY-TO-DAY JACK? "With no disrespect, I don’t like discussing personalities. I think Jack, certainly, has to look at things differently than he did before this. There’s no way you go through a situation that he went through, which is really unusual, and not wake up in the morning with a different attitude. There’s no way in the world you don’t do that. I prefer not to get into the conversation about how I see he’s different and how I don’t see he’s different because I just don’t know if that’s appropriate, but there’s just no way you can go through an incident like that without it having a major impact on your life and it has had a major impact on Jack’s life, there’s no doubt about it."
WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO PREPARE FOR RICHMOND? "We went up there and tested the Busch car in the spring, even though we didn’t race in the spring we’re gonna race it in the fall. We thought we had a great test with the Busch car and we’re racing the Busch car at this race. The main thing we’re doing is we’re looking at our notes from what we did in the spring to try and apply that in the fall. We ran very well there in the spring. We had a great chance to win and I cut a tire and ended up getting in a wreck and still came back and finished third. We were really happy with our effort in the spring and we’ll have the Busch car up there and try some stuff on it Thursday afternoon and Friday and, hopefully, we can use that stuff on the Winston Cup car, but we don’t have a test there even though we did test there in the spring."
WHAT ABOUT TRACK SETUP FOR RICHMOND? "The track did a lot of different things this last race there. The top groove never came in. The track had a tremendous amount of grip, but when you got out of the groove, you didn’t have any grip so that changed the way you set your car up. If the track does the same thing again, it will surprise me. I think the track will open up and get the high groove working again, so that will change your setup. But if it doesn’t do that, then the setups that you ran there in the spring will work again in the fall."
FRANK STODDARD –99– CITGO TAURUS
YOU’RE PRETTY PASSIONATE ON PIT ROAD. WHAT WAS IT LIKE AT BRISTOL? "You go through a lot at Bristol. We worked ourselves up into the Top 5 and thought we had a good car and the next thing you know, you’re in an accident that we couldn’t do much about. Then you’re frantically trying to stay on the lead lap and try to salvage what you can of a finish, so it’s a range of emotions."
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT PREPARING A CAR FOR DARLINGTON? "The biggest thing you fight at Darlington is that the tire wear is generally real excessive, so to try to get a car to stay real consistent throughout a run is very difficult. You shock package and your spring package is something you really have to work on a great deal, and then one of the other elements of Darlington that you really have to put an emphasis on is making sure that your radiator doesn’t get plugged up with all the rubber that gets chewed off the tires, so to speak. You run a little bit different grille screen than you might run at other race tracks and you take and make sure you clean your radiator a little bit after practice, which you normally wouldn’t have to do at other race tracks. That’s probably the biggest factor that’s different from other race tracks is watching over the radiator at Darlington."
HAS IT BEEN FRUSTRATING TO DIAL IN THIS TIRE AT DARLINGTON? "It’s made it real difficult. All of the setups we used to use, I mean, if you pulled out something you ran three years ago and showed somebody, you’d just absolutely laugh at it. It’s not even close to what anybody runs today. People that haven’t been in this sport for the last two or three years, if I went up to a guy like Tim Brewer, who was a winner forever, and showed him what we run today, he’d be like, ’There’s no way you’re running that.’ He wouldn’t believe you. So it’s been a huge change of pace and it’s been very difficult to adapt to in a lot of areas."
YOU HAVE WON TWO STRAIGHT AT PHOENIX. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THAT TRACK? "I don’t know. For whatever reason, that track is a little bit like Loudon. We’ve always run fairly well at Loudon and have always run well at Phoenix. Even though we’ve won the last two races out there, looking back at it throughout all my notes, we’ve had a car good enough to win probably five out of the last five races out there. We’ve always run well out there, but haven’t got the finishes to show for it. It’s a track that Jeff really loves because there’s nothing special that I do, other than put the setup in the car that he feels good about. When they drop the green, he just seems to find his way to the front."
IT SEEMS THAT TRACK HAS A LOT OF OBSTACLES. "I think one of the things about that race track is that the two ends of the race track are so different. It takes a really nice, smooth driving style. I think there are a lot of ways you can get in and out of the corners, but when you find that absolute perfect spot to get in and out of the corners that is real fast, then being able to duplicate that time after time, lap after lap, probably makes a big difference. I think Jeff is able to do that. He’s as smooth as anybody that I know and watch and I think once he finds the line, he’s able to run within two inches of that line for 50 to 100 to 250 – whatever it is – consecutive laps and that’s probably a big part of it as well."
DO YOU HAVE ANY UPDATE ON THE NEW RESTRICTOR PLATE RULES? "Not really. I talked to John Darby a little bit after they went to Daytona a few weeks ago. The last thing they were working on and started to see a little progress on, I guess they didn’t get to run because it rained so they’re getting ready to go back pretty soon. They’re gonna go to either Talladega or Daytona again and try to simulate what they wanted to do the first time and didn’t get to finish. I think they’re certainly looking at some things. Obviously, we’ve got the fuel cell deal we’re gonna be debuting at Talladega this time. That ought to be some of indication of how that works will carry over to the Daytona 500, I guess."
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE INVOLVED IN SOMETHING LIKE THAT? "The last deal they had, Gary Nelson actually asked me to go. We had originally planned to go to Bristol and test around that time, so we weren’t gonna be able to do that one. It is something we like to do. At the same time, it gets to be frustrating because when you get all the manufacturers together, everybody has their own idea and every manufacturer is out to get the rules to best suit themselves, so I have no fun in that."
SO IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU PARTICIPATE OR NOT? "If something is gonna be really worthwhile out of the event, then, certainly, I always want to be there to participate in it."
http://www.fordracing.com/news/?article=20...32&flashcheck=1
SADLER PREPARES FOR TOUGH, HISTORIC TRACK
8/27/2002
POSTCARDS FROM THE ROAD
Darlington, S.C. — Elliott Sadler, driver of the No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus, has a strong sense of history regarding stock-car racing. One of the tracks he visited as a young fan was Darlington Raceway, site of this weekend’s Mountain Dew Southern 500. Darlington hosted its first NASCAR race on Sept. 4, 1950, and Sadler says he is looking forward to returning to the historic egg-shaped 1.366-mile oval. Sadler qualified sixth and finished second at Darlington in the fifth race of this season, and started sixth there in the spring of 2000 and the fall of 1999.
ELLIOTT SADLER
“I think a lot of us that grow up around Darlington Raceway enjoy going to that race track. We know what it means. I’ve been in the stands many times watching the Southern 500, so to go there and race this race is very important to us. We want to do well there – and it’s one of my better tracks. It’s a driver’s race track. It’s very slick. You really gotta manhandle your stuff all day. I really enjoy going there, and I’m looking forward to a good weekend there.”
BECAUSE THE TRACK IS EGG-SHAPED, DO YOU TRY TO SET UP THE CAR FOR ONE END, OR DO YOU TRY TO SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE? “You try to split the difference and find a happy medium – which is hard. It’s very demanding on the crew chief, but Pat [Tryson, crew chief] has been doing a great job there the last few years making sure we do get a happy medium. We’re going back with the same car we finished second there with in the spring, so we have high hopes and high expectations, and hopefully with a little bit of luck we’ll have a good weekend.”
IN ADDITION TO THE DIFFERENT CORNERS, THE TRACK SEEMS VERY NARROW… “It is. It’s very narrow. I think that’s one of the most narrow race tracks that we race on, and it’s hard to race there, but that’s why we like it.”
http://www.nascar.com/2002/news/headlines/...gton/index.html
Jarrett craves success in Southern 500
By Dave Rodman, Turner Sports Interactive August 27, 2002
2:22 PM EDT (1822 GMT)
DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Given Dale Jarrett's record at Darlington Raceway, it's a surprise that he hasn't won a Southern 500 at the legendary 1.366-mile oval.
Jarrett has a stout eight top-five finishes, including three victories, in his last 11 races at the track tabbed as "Too Tough To Tame." They include his best Southern 500 efforts in 15 starts -- third place finishes in 1997 and 1998.
But everything he has accomplished in his career, including three Daytona 500 wins and the 1999 NASCAR Winston Cup championship, would get nearly equal billing if he can win the 53rd annual Southern 500 on Sunday.
"It would be the ultimate to me to be able to win the Southern 500 and to have that victory on my resume before I call it quits," Jarrett said. "I've won big races, but I haven't won that race."
Since Jarrett won the Winston Cup Series' last superspeedway race, at Michigan International Speedway, he comes to South Carolina with high hopes and the same car with which he scored both the win at MIS and his other victory this season, at Pocono Raceway.
"We sometimes get accused of not making real smart moves when it comes to taking cars to the track," Jarrett said. "But we know what a good thing we have with this car. It is a very good race car and it runs well everywhere we've raced it this year, so we are taking the Michigan car."
Jarrett hopes his effective piece will enable him to ease one of his biggest career disappointments, which came at Darlington in 1996. Jarrett had previously won the Daytona 500 and Coca-Cola 600 and had a chance at series' sponsor Winston's "Winston Million" bonus of $1 million if he won the Southern 500.
But Jarrett hit the wall in Turn 1 on the tricky egg-shaped track, and that ended his chance at the victory in a race won by Jeff Gordon, who was in the midst of a four-straight skein of capturing the Southern 500.
Jarrett said the stifling late summer temperatures and humidity that Darlington is known to only magnify the treacherous nature of the track.
"I think the biggest thing for me when it comes to Darlington is the challenge it presents," Jarrett said. "It's so totally different. Each end of the track is so different and you have to drive both ends totally different.
"It's a difficult task to negotiate Darlington for 500 miles for a number of reasons. First the track is difficult and it's still mid-summer this time of the year there and you can expect it to be 150 degrees in the race car."
But for Jarrett, a Darlington victory would allow him to equal the mark established by his father, two-time Winston Cup champion Ned Jarrett, who won the 1965 Southern 500 by a whopping 14 laps.
"I can remember back to that day in 1965 when my dad won the Southern 500," Dale said. "It was one of the top races. When I was a kid I listed to people like my dad, Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and David Pearson talk about winning that race -- so I always knew from an early age that it was something I wanted to win."
http://www.morningnewsonline.com/MGBAE9Y5F5D.html
Aug 28, 2002
Mayfield: Darlington best shot for a win
By WADE BAKER
Morning News
DARLINGTON -- Last year at this time, things weren't exactly going the way Jeremy Mayfield envisioned.
Sure, he was part of a race team -- consisting of former Winston Cup champion Rusty Wallace -- but it wasn't the combination Mayfield was looking for.
The problems only intensified throughout the season and before Mayfield knew it, after the inaugural race at Kansas Speedway, he parted ways with the No. 12 team.
"I came from a team where it was two teams," said the 33-year-old Mayfield at Darlington recently. "It was 100 percent two teams. You know what I mean, it wasn't one. I don't think there was anything wrong with the way the other two teams were, it was just we had two separate teams.
"One was down the street from the other."
So, with seven races remaining in the season, Mayfield elected not to car hop, like some drivers do. He just walked away from the sport for an extended vacation. He could have easily picked up rides from week to week, but he knew that wasn't the type of driver he wanted to be.
Instead, he concentrated on the future.
When Sundays came, he watched the race on the television just like other fans of Winston Cup. But, when the race was over it was back to work -- trying to find another race team for the 2002 season.
His problem was short-lived when car owner Ray Evernham made his pitch to Mayfield, where he would take over Casey Atwood's ride in the No. 19 Dodge -- with Atwood moving to another car in Evernham's stable.
"It was very tough," said Mayfield. "It wasn't very tough during the week, but Sundays were really tough. What helped me get through it was Ray and I had already been talking and looking at which direction we were going in.
"I wanted to race bad, to get back out there and run. We also decided, what good was that going to do me. I'm not the type that can car hop from week to week."
When you see Mayfield hanging around the garage with a huge smile on his face don't think he's unconcerned with the race at hand that weekend. It's just finally, in a long time, he's found a team he's at ease with.
That wasn't the case with his former teammate and team of a year ago, with the constant problems always being aired into the public like clockwork.
This year, it's about having fun.
That's why you see Mayfield appearing in a humorous commercial having a woman getting into his car, trying to impress him by wearing an "Octane '93" fragrance.
"I'm having fun, I think everyone on the team is," said Mayfield. "You can look at me around the track and tell that. You can even see it in the commercials we are doing now. Sitting out the end of last year, watching races on television, I think has really made me a better person."
While Mayfield has struggled during the first half of the season, he's been paired with a teammate that's done more than revamp his career this season —— Bill Elliott.
Elliott has won two races this year, the biggest being a Brickyard 400 win in July, and is in the top-10 in points.
Mayfield has just two top-fives, while going winless and finding himself 28th in points. Not what he was looking for —— a driver with three-career Winston Cup wins —— but not totally a bad sign for the first-year Dodge driver.
"All we want is the same thing, to win," he said. "That's what we work all week to do, to get that win. As the year goes on you're going to see us get better and better."
And the best way for Mayfield to turn the freshman campaign around is by winning Sunday's 53rd running of the Mountain Dew Southern 500. In 16 career races at Darlington he's had five top-fives.
"I think Darlington is definitely our best shot at a win, in the upcoming races on the schedule," Mayfield said. "I want to win here, I really do. That would be huge —— to win the Southern 500 for Ray in our first year."
http://www.dalejr.com/story.asp
8/27/2002
Race Preview: Darlington
Jade Gurss
Dale Jr. Quotes
"The momentum is back on our side, and we’re really working well as a team right now. I think we all have stepped up and it’s paying off. Two good runs in a row is something we haven’t had since early in the season. With the way Tony Jr. (Eury, car chief) and the guys are working, it should stay that way the rest of the season. The points have gotten away from us for this year, but we’re going to end strong and work toward living up to the championship expectations in 2003...
"I used to dread going to Darlington - the people at the track even gave me a trophy for saying the surface is full of nothing but shells and garbage (it still is, by the way) -- but we have really concentrated on making the car b
http://www.motorsport.com/news/series.asp?S=NASCAR-WCS
Darlington II: Bill Elliott preview
NASCAR-WCS
2002-08-28
BILL ELLIOTT NO. 9 DODGE DEALERS INTREPID R/T
RUNNING AT DARLINGTON
"Darlington can be tough. It helps if you've been around it a few times. We've had some good runs there in the Dodge. I don't know what it is, but I always seem to have better runs at the Southern. You always hear about how abrasive the track can be that's why tires are important here. They fall off so fast because of that. It really helps if you know how to conserve them. I'm sure that will be important this weekend as well."
SOUTHERN 500
"I want to win any race, it doesn't matter where it is. This race is one of the bigger ones on the circuit, but like I said after Indy, no one race is more important than another. We just have to keep doing what we're doing. If we do that, then we'll continue to be competitive and put ourselves in position to win races."
WINNING THE MILLION
"It was a pretty big deal back then. It was the first time that it was done and that created a lot of excitement about it. Things got a little out of hand leading up to the race but we kind of got them under control by the time we got to Darlington, the media and all the attention. We just tried to concentrate on the car and doing what we needed to do. It is definitely a highlight in my career and one people still seem to talk about."
POSSIBILITY OF RUNNING UNDER LIGHTS AT DARLINGTON
"Everyone seems to like racing under the lights. They're always big races for the fans, just like Bristol. Doing it during the holiday weekend would create a lot of excitement I'm sure."
RACE NOTES
* Bill Elliott and the No. 9 Dodge Squad will bring the Dodge Intrepid R/T that qualified and finished 2nd at Dover this year.
* This Sunday Bill Elliott will celebrate his 50th visit to one of his best tracks, Darlington Raceway. After 49 appearances at the track, Elliott leads all active drivers with five Bud Poles and is tied with Jeff Gordon for the most victories (five) among active drivers. He also leads all modern-era drivers in top-fives (20) and top 10s (32) at the track. Elliott's 9.16 average finish at Darlington is best among all active drivers.
Darlington II: Kevin Harvick preview
NASCAR-WCS
2002-08-28
Darlington Raceway, the 44th competitor.
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (August 26, 2002) - This speedway this spring, Kevin Harvick whittled his way to his first top-ten of the season, taking away the third position. This go-around, things are a little different. The 2001 Busch Series Champion has all but dominated the latter-half season point standings and is chiseling his way toward a top-ten finish in the NASCAR Winston Cup Owners Point Standings. Having accumulated six top-tens in the last seven races, there's little that has derailed the No. 29 GM Goodwrench Service team.
The 1.366-mile Darlington (S.C.) Raceway presents tight racing conditions and is conceivably the hardest race to race, because it's not just the other 42 cars you need to worry about. Your toughest competitor is the racetrack itself.
The track known as "too tough to tame" conjures up fear for some drivers. The "Lady in Black," sends almost half of the 43-car race field home with bent fenders or blown motors. But, for Harvick, the tenacity of the track - its unrelenting viciousness - is something that sparks his animated nature. It is, perhaps, why the Southern 500 is one on a list of "Most Wanted Wins" by the whole NASCAR Winston Cup field.
Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 29 GM Goodwrench Service Chevrolet Monte Carlo, speaks tradition, racing with a 44th competitor, and laps around the Darlington Raceway:
Who cares about the Lady in Red when you have one wearing Black. "I want to win Darlington because it's so hard to drive. It's so hard to get your car set up right. Any place that has a long list of the sport's greats winning or dominating there - you want to be added to the list.
"We're on this roll right now. These next races can make or break you, and a lot of it has to do with luck. We're short track racing for a while here. We came through Bristol extremely well, and now we have Darlington, Richmond, and New Hampshire. All of these are places where you can run really well and finish really bad because of someone else's mistake. This is where you'll see the shake up in points, and we're just trying to get on the good side of it all."
New Rule: 44 competitors instead of 43. "Your biggest competition is the track. You can't go too hard and you can't just ride around with the top down. You have to know your car and know whether it'll give in the turn or plow down the frontstretch. If you know how the track is going to behave with your car, you're golden. That's the biggest way you make it past the rest of the 42 guys out there.
"Goodyear has these tires now that last forever. But Darlington will still run them tougher than any other place. It's by far the hardest on them. I don't know if anyone could ever make a piece of rubber hard enough to take on Darlington. It used to be stickers (new tires) wouldn't last very long. But, if you had hit a late race caution right, the guy with the newer tires will win. He'd be that much faster."
The Harvick Driving Experience: Let's take a lap. "You take your laps with the pace car and you drive off past the start finish line into turn one. It's really narrow. Very narrow. You just let off (the gas) and then you need to get right back on it. You drive it up to the wall and ride it as close to the wall as you can. This would be where drivers get that famed 'Darlington Stripe.' While you're next to the wall, you ride three-quarters of the way through the corner. Then, you breathe out of the gas and get the car pointed to turn two. Coming off of turn two it's like shootin' the hole, riding up next to the wall down the back straight-away. Into turn three, you get back in it (the gas) and drive the car to the bottom. And then it slides all the way to the top. You get on the gas, come off of the corner of turn four. You're right up against the wall the whole way around. They must have to repaint that wall everyday we're there.
"It's about comfort I think. You ride up against the wall the whole time for 400 miles, That can be unnerving. It takes a lot of endurance - like any other track, but it also is constant concentration on not only what the field is doing, but how close you are to that wall. It's hard to do. With Darlington, the only paved surface you can drive on is two and a half cars wide. Everyone will hit the wall at least once or twice. It's just a matter of how hard and when you do it.
"A good handling racecar is the most important aspect. If you've got something that's loose or tight, you're not going to make it. You'll get into other people or the wall a bunch. Who ever drops off the least and runs the longest is going to be your race winner."
Darlington II: Tony Stewart preview
NASCAR-WCS
2002-08-28
Tony Stewart
Back to old school.
ATLANTA (Aug. 26, 2002) - Labor Day weekend typically marks the end of summer and the beginning of school for many a child across the United States. Therefore it's only fitting that the 53rd running of the Southern 500 at the historic Darlington (S.C.) Raceway marks a return to old school racing for those competing in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series.
Darlington is the oldest track on the 23-venue Winston Cup tour, having run its first race back in 1950 in what was then called the Grand National Series. Much has changed around the 1.366-mile egg-shaped oval since then, but the tough and gritty layout remains virtually the same since Johnny Mantz took the first checkered flag Darlington ever offered.
For Stewart, a 31-year-old throwback to the days of A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti and Parnelli Jones - drivers who would race anything, anywhere - Darlington represents old school racing, where driver feel and the ability to adapt to ever-changing track conditions reign superior.
With the abrasive track surface attacking tires like a cheese-grader, racing at Darlington means constantly driving an ill-handling race car. After 10 laps, whatever grip your tires once had is no more, and the seat-of-the-pants feel drivers are ordained with is all that's left.
For Stewart, that's an advantage. When not piloting his #20 Home Depot Pontiac or attending one of his many sponsor appearances, Stewart is racing somewhere. Whether it be on dirt or on pavement, the various cars wheeled by Stewart in various racing environments make the Indiana native a chameleon of sorts, easily adapting to his latest surroundings.
It's the best practice one can get for racing at Darlington.
You just left one tough race track in Bristol (Tenn.) and you're heading to another one in Darlington. How similar are the two tracks when it comes to their physical nature?
"Bristol is tougher physically because you have less time when you're on the straightaways to relax. You almost have no time, really. But at Darlington, the straightaways are long enough to where you can relax a little bit. But don't get me wrong, it's still a tough track."
How tough is this span of races - Bristol, Darlington, Richmond (Va.), Loudon (N.H.), Dover (Del.) - before the relative reprieve of Kansas City?
"For us, it's the best stretch of the schedule. It's tough for the race teams and the crew, but for me personally, this is one of the stretches in the schedule that I really enjoy."
What makes this part of the schedule work to your advantage?
"It gets hot and slippery. The cars start sliding around a lot more, and that seems to play into my hands. It's something that I'm comfortable with, whereas some other drivers might not be."
Do you credit your extra-curricular racing to the success that you've historically enjoyed during this stretch of the season?
"It certainly hasn't hurt me any. I feel like all the stuff that I did in the past to get me to this level definitely helped me, and I really believe that the racing I do now outside of Winston Cup continues to help, especially now when the tracks are hot and slick."
Do you feel this part of the schedule is where other teams start dragging?
"I think so, and this is the part of the year where if you sense that, you can really capitalize on it by preying on the weak, so to speak."
Despite the outcome of this year's spring Darlington race, do you feel that was your best run yet at Darlington?
"I believe it equals our best run. We got ourselves in a situation where we were on four fresh tires and a lot of the other guys only had two fresh tires, and we were able to take advantage of that. But with the wreck, it just didn't work out."
(Stewart had never led a lap at Darlington until this year's spring race, where he led a total of seven laps before a spinning Buckshot Jones collected him coming off turn two on lap 226. With his #20 Home Depot Pontiac already damaged, Stewart was then T-boned by the Dodge of Jimmy Spencer, a hit that sent Stewart to the hospital for overnight observation. - Ed.)
You're coming up on your eighth career race at Darlington. With the age of the track, the various tire compounds you've brought there, the advancing technology of the cars, has the track changed much since you first raced there in March of 1999?
"I don't think the track has ever changed. It's still just as tough as it ever was. Goodyear can bring any tire they want there, but the surface will still tear it up. It's not because of a lack of effort on Goodyear's part, it's just that Darlington has a very abrasive surface that's worn out. And anytime you have a track that's worn out like Darlington is, it's virtually impossible to bring a tire that is going to live. It's just a tough race track, but that's what makes it a lot of fun too."
Does Darlington's track surface seem to change drastically from the time you were there in March to the time you go there in late August/early September?
"It seems like the track is a lot hotter and gives up a lot more grip in August. But that track has always been a tire management type of race track, so you're still going to have to worry about saving your tires. But if the tires are a little harder, like they've been this year, then it's easier to do that."
Darlington pays the same amount of points as any other track on the circuit, but because of its history, it seems to be a race you want to win badly. Is that a fair assessment?
"I'd love to win the Southern 500. When I'm watching TV and I see an old race from Darlington, I'm able to see the history of Darlington and the Southern 500, along with all of the greats who have run there and won there and crashed out of the joint. There's some deep history there, and the race fans down there are some of the most dedicated race fans in our series. That makes it really enjoyable to run well, and hopefully win there."
Do you hold the Southern 500 in the same regard as the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 because of its history?
"You learn a lot about the Southern 500 by watching Speed Channel and seeing all of the classic races. It was kind of like the appreciation I got for Daytona (Fla.) with the 500. Everybody knows it's the biggest race of the year, but to see its history, you realize why it's such a spectacle. It's the same with the Southern 500. You see it's history and you realize what a special event it is, and it makes you want to win it that much more."
Is Darlington the one track on the Winston Cup circuit where you feel you have to work the hardest?
"It's one of the tracks where we seem to work the hardest. The way the tires fall off and as narrow as the track is - it's hard to pass. So, you've got to get your car driving well to be able to pass. You don't want to use up your tires too early in a run. It's definitely one of the harder tracks on the circuit, but there are a lot of hard tracks on our schedule."
Are there different lines that you can run at Darlington?
"The way the tires fall off and the way that you have to change your driving style to compensate for what the tires lack at the end of a run, you'll end up running different lines. You've got to change your driving style each lap - change where you're lifting, how much you're braking, how much you're on the throttle. Some guys from the beginning of a run will race right up against the wall just because that's where their car feels good. It's not so much as the run goes on that you get closer to the wall, it's more dependent on how your car is handling. For instance, my Home Depot Pontiac may start up there, but there might be another guy who starts his run at the bottom of the track."
Darlington II: Dodge Motorsports - Bill Davis Racing
NASCAR-WCS
2002-08-27
WARD BURTON (No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge Intrepid R/T)
NOTE: Burton is the defending champion of the Mountain Dew Southern 500. He also won the 2000 spring race at the 1.366-mile egg-shaped oval. The 2002 Daytona 500 winner, Burton also won this season at New Hampshire in the Bill Davis Racing Dodge. He holds the qualifying record of 173.797 mph at Darlington set March 22, 1996. Burton finished 37th Saturday night at Bristol and ranks 27th in the NASCAR Winston Cup Standings with 12 races remaining on the 2002 schedule.
"I don't know how good I am at Darlington. I've been lucky to have good race cars there. We've been able to capitalize on two of the events, but there's been at least three others where I felt like we had the car to win the race. We've kind of got to avenge ourselves a little bit from the spring race. We got caught in a wreck when the 20 car got into the 44. We were running fifth then. We had just got the car pretty good. We were as good as anybody on the long runs. The first 20-25 laps, we'd get out-sprinted a little bit. We're going there with the same car, and we're going to work really hard to get it turning right so we can hopefully be a threat.
"There's always a lot of sand blowing around at Rockingham and Darlington. The asphalt doesn't stay like regular asphalt for very long. It gets real rocky. A lot of the blacktop between the rocks starts disappearing and that creates a very course condition that the tires wear on. There's no tire you can build that's not going to wear under those conditions. The new tire they've come out with makes it even tougher because the damn thing doesn't want to turn with the way the tire construction is. That's a challenge we have at every track. The reason Darlington is so much more challenging is because we run six inches away from the wall in both corners. You can overshoot a little bit and that's when you get in the wall. Everybody in this garage has had that Darlington stripe, and they're going to have another one before it's over with. Actually both races we won there we had a stripe on both sides of the car. It's all right to get a little stripe. It's not all right to get a big one. Most of the grip is close to the wall, so you're going to nip it a little bit every now and then with the right rear quarter.
"I think you've got to like Darlington. There is a place where I know, and I might not get there and be able to run there in the first 300 miles, and it's hard to sit there and visually see, but when I get in that groove and get my car where it's working, my line changes. Even if it's only a couple of feet in each corner, that couple of feet adds to a lot of mph to me, but I've got to have a car to allow me to do that. I can't go into detail what it is, and it would be hard for me to explain it. I know I'm in the zone when I'm there, and it definitely makes a difference. You gain a ton of time in both corners. You gain a ton of time coming off turn two and you gain a ton of time from the middle of three to the exit of four when I can get my car to do what I need it to do there.
"We haven't varied a whole lot on the setup from race to race. We've varied a little bit. Actually in the 500 last year, I was trying too hard for the pole and we hit the wall and had to rebuild the whole car. We didn't get that car right until the last 75 laps, and it was going that way again last spring. We didn't qualify well and we got in the top 10 and then in the top five and then we got in a wreck. We were just starting to make the kind of adjustments that the car was starting to come around to us.
"It's pretty simple. It's the same as everywhere else. You've got to give and take. You've got to work hard to be there at the end of the race. You run laps and learn. You race the race track and not the competitors and you don't get too involved with a one-lap battle because you've got a 500-mile battle.
"If you've got 20 laps on your tires and somebody behind you doesn't at Darlington, he's got you beat. I don't think there's any way around that. At the same time, a lot of that kind of philosophy is out the window this year. Our car at New Hampshire was better on 60-lap tires than it was on new tires. At Darlington, the way the tires wear out, if a guy is pretty good and he's got four new tires on, it would probably be physically impossible to beat him unless the lapped cars or something got in the way.
"I got pushed high one time in three and four at New Hampshire last time. They had just blown the track and luckily we were able to miss the wall. I know they've been trying to do some things to the New Hampshire track, but to me, the track has always been like that. I think it's been like that since day one. For a short track race, we hit a ton up there. The tragedy that has happened there proves it. I don't think there's any question. I'm not going to sit here and try to bash the race track. I think the Bahres are great people, but they need to work on some areas up there. They've been talking about it for years. We just increased the groove to the apron last time with the new paving. Taking that sealer off like they're doing right now as I understand it, I don't see where that's the answer at all. A lot of people are smarter than I am about that stuff, but no banking and a flat one-mile race track, it's pretty much a dragstrip and then you stop in the middle of the corner. That's the problem.
"We're either battling for the win or we're trying to stay on the lead lap this season. There's no in between. I have not been able to give the proper input about the cars on some of the bigger racetracks. The team has not been able to have a baseline as to where to start at, and that gets us too far off. Short tracks, we can see what we need to do and a lot of times make good adjustments. Tommy Baldwin (crew chief) and I and all the engineers and the chassis guys and the motors guys, it's every one of them. Tommy and I have got to figure out how to get back to a baseline. If we're a 20th-place car, then we need to be a 20th-place car and not turn into a 40th-place car. I think in some areas we need some help to figure it out.
"We've tried a lot of stuff from week to week. A lot of stuff has worked and a lot of stuff hasn't worked. I think we've been pitiful at some places and we've gotten off the baseline. It used to be we could be horrible the first of the race and make adjustments and come back and run in the top five and have a shot at winning. Very rarely can we do that now. I don't have any answers to it right now.
"We just need to find some consistency somewhere. In '99 we were the most consistent we've ever been and we've steadily gone down consistently since then. We know how to win now. We've just got to get back to running consistent now."
BILL DAVIS (Car owner Bill Davis Racing Dodge Intrepid R/Ts)
"Ward has always been good at Darlington. When he first went down there in a Busch car he ran great. I think that's the first place I ever noticed him. I think he goes into Darlington, and instead of being intimidated by it and dreading it, like some people approach road racing, I think Ward goes in there and like 'man this is a tough place and all my heros ran well here. It takes a really great driver to master this place and not be intimidated by it.' I think he's always accepted it as a challenge, and I know Darlington is one place that John Burton, his daddy, always took the boys when they were real young. On Labor Day and maybe the spring race, too, they went to the race. Ward tells stories about camping out there.
He tells the story about camping out down there a lot. I don't know how old Ward was, but they go camp out. They've got a motor home and John says they ought to build a camp fire. He told the boys to go get some wood. Well, old boy scout Ward is ready. He gets his ax and goes out there and finds some pine trees down one of the roads near the track. He goes out there and chops one down. He drags it back to the motorhome and starts chopping it up and splitting it. John asked him where he got it. I don't think they ever got in trouble for it, but they know about it now.
"I expect to have a car capable of winning the race when Ward Burton is driving at Darlington. I think any time we've ever gone there with Ward we've been in position to win the race. We ran at Bristol with Ward first and ran good all night. With about 100 laps to go there was a big wreck and we ran over somebody's bumper. It poked a hole in the oil cooler and ended our night. We went to Darlington the next week and ran in the top five all day. I think we finished fifth in our second race together. I can't remember us ever going to Darlington and running terrible. I think we've always gone and run well.
"I don't know how you can go week to week and be so radically different and so inconsistent. That's one thing we'd kinda got hold of the past few years. That's why we've finished in the top 10 in points. Mechanical deals have been the craziest things because we've never had problems there. It hasn't been car preparation. Stuff hasn't fallen off the car. We've just had goofy stuff break. We're keep breaking drive shafts, crank shafts and transmissions. We were driving off at Richmond in great shape, certainly with a car that could have been in position to win the race. Then we broke a drive shaft. It's been a pretty goofy deal, and I don't have an explanation. I wish I did. I wish there was an easy fix for it. I think we're addressing it and trying to figure it out the best we can.
"I think the Dodge is a great piece. We've certainly got better cars than we've ever had before. We understand them better and know more about them, so I don't think Dodge has anything to do with our problems. This was the year we thought we were going to break out and really do something better. We certainly got off to an unbelievable start, and then when it didn't go like we thought, I think it was that much harder on us confidence wise, everybody playing on the same team and pulling in the same direction. I think the trouble we had in the first three or four races really hit us hard. It's not enough to win a race. That won't turn things around. I wish it would.
"If you look around this garage, it's terrible, but we're not alone. Bobby Labonte is one of the best racers in here with one of the best racing teams. They're just partially better than we are. Childress' deal is not where it's always been. It's an unusual year. Look at all the trailers up there that haven't even been here in the past and they're up front now.
"For us it's not about winning races. We've won two and that's been amazing we've been able to do that. I think if we just get back on track and knock off some top 10s and top fives, that's what we're looking for.
"We're set for next year. Stay tuned for Tuesday night. We're going to have two Cup teams and a Busch team next year. Scott Wimmer is going to run Busch again. They're so close to winning races. He needs to win races and run for that championship. He's done a pretty good job this year, but another year in Busch won't hurt him. We'll do that and a year from now we'll evaluate things and see where we are. We've got to get our two Cup teams where they need to be before we add a third one."
http://www.fordracing.com/news/?article=20...33&flashcheck=1
BURTON HOPES TO RELIVE PAST DARLINGTON GLORY
8/27/2002
THIS WEEK IN FORD RACING
Darlington, S.C. — Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 99 Citgo Taurus, is one of two active Ford drivers to win the Southern 500, joining teammate Mark Martin in that category in 1999. Burton, who is still looking for his first triumph of 2002, spoke about the annual Labor Day weekend event as part of this week’s NASCAR Winston Cup Series teleconference.
JEFF BURTON
YOU WON BOTH RACES IN ’99 SO YOU MUST FEEL YOUR CHANCES ARE PRETTY GOOD. "It depends on what the weather is, I guess. We have certainly run well at Darlington and it’s certainly one of my favorite race tracks. The last three races there we haven’t run like we’re used to running. It’s kind of one of those race tracks that we used to just love going to and now we’re a little nervous about going to because we used to almost be at the point of being dominant. We led a tremendous amount of laps in all the races we were in. We only ended up winning two of them, but we dominated a lot of those races and ended up having pit stops and stuff happened at the end and we didn’t win ’em. It’s a track we’ve always done well at, but, again, it’s been a challenge for us the last three races and we need to get ourselves back to where we used to be."
THE TRACK DOESN’T CHANGE BUT OTHER THINGS DO THAT CAN AFFECT SUCCESS AT DARLINGTON. "I think the biggest thing that’s changed is the tire. Even though the tire falls off on speed, it doesn’t fall off to the extent that it used to fall off. It doesn’t feel as good when it’s new, but it doesn’t feel as bad when it’s old. What our strength used to be at Darlington is we’d always qualify 10th to 15th, right in there, but on a 50-lap run, the 99 car was really fast all the time. We were never real fast to start, but since the new tire we’ve had trouble getting that back. Aerodynamics are so important now and a lot of things are important now. The stuff that used to work doesn’t work anymore and we’ve had a tough time letting go of what has worked for us in the past because we’ve had so much success in trying to figure out what we need to do in the future."
DOVER, RICHMOND AND LOUDON ARE UP NEXT. DO YOU SET GOALS IN ADVANCE? "We go week to week. We obviously plan farther ahead than that, but when Bristol was over we were thinking about Darlington and when Darlington gets over we think about the next race. That’s how we do it. We try not to look too far ahead. If you map a plan out for four or five races ahead, then what happens is you get complacent. ’We’ll take car 82 and car 74 to this race and that race.’ Well, it may be that you’ve built a better car since then or you’ve just ran a car and had a great run with it so you want to run it again. So, we don’t plan too far ahead, but, certainly, when Darlington is over we’ve got our minds on the next race."
IS IT RACING WHEN CARS JUST BUMP OTHER CARS OUT OF THE WAY? "It’s been like that for a long time at Bristol. That’s what Bristol is, like it or not. You live by the sword and you die by the sword. If you’re willing to knock a guy out of the way to win the race, then you have to understand that the next time you’re leading, the guy behind you has the right to knock you out of the way. That’s how it works. You drive people the way they drive you and you also drive people the way they drive other people. If you see a guy that will constantly knock people out of the way, then you have way less respect for him as far as what you can do with him in the race car. Jeff did what he had to do to win the race, but, at some point, that will come back to him and he’ll lose a race somewhere because of what he did at Bristol. I’m not saying he did wrong, I’m just saying that’s the reality of it and you’ve got to understand that whatever you do has consequences to it."
THERE SEEMS TO BE A LOT MORE REACTION ON TRACK AFTER THAT KIND OF THING. IS NASCAR BEST SERVED BY THAT KIND OF EMOTION? "That could start up a great debate. It certainly gets people talking about the sport. Is it the professionalism that we hope to pull off? No, probably not. Does it make for great TV? It certainly does [laughing]. I was in the race and I wanted to get home Sunday to watch the replay of the race so I could see all the interviews. It is what it is. It makes it exciting and it makes it interesting, but some of it is borderline unprofessional for sure. But it’s a high emotion sport. That’s one of the things I said about Tony Stewart when he was having such a hard time there, it’s high emotion. You try hard and when somebody takes away your opportunity to succeed, it makes you mad and everybody reacts to that differently."
HOW DO YOU GET RID OF YOUR EMOTION? "I don’t know. It changes. One day you get over it pretty quick and the next day, for some reason, it makes you so mad you can’t get over it. We had a really fast race car Saturday night and I got in a wreck that was none of my doing. The driver that I thought had caused the wreck, I saw him after the race and I laughed. We talked about it and it was just Bristol. I wasn’t mad about it at all because it was just Bristol. Then, another time, I can get into a wreck with a guy that it makes me so mad I can hardly stand it. So, I think it really depends on the time and all the stuff leading up to the wreck. I try to catch my breath and realize my kids are watching, but it’s hard to do."
DO YOU FEEL DRIVERS ARE GETTING THEIR SHARE OF THE MONEY OUT THERE AND HOW COME NASCAR DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE THE PROBLEMS BASEBALL DOES? "I’m gonna speak for myself. Roush Racing has treated me fair. They’ve given me raises when they can afford to give me raises and I’ve never had to go to them and ask for more money. When our sponsorship got bigger or we had success, then I saw it in my paycheck as well. So, from a personal standpoint, I’m completely satisfied with the way I’ve been treated from a money standpoint and I have no complaint whatsoever. The NASCAR situation compared to Major League Baseball and the NFL is completely different. We are individually owned. The race teams essentially have no business ties to NASCAR. They operate independently without contract, with the exception of having a contract that says if you’re on the winner’s circle you agree to come to all the races and you get extra money – those kinds of things. But, short of that, we operate independently. So, if I have a problem with the way I’m being treated as a driver, then I have a problem with the guy I work for and not the organization that’s having the races. Generally, when there’s a problem with a car owner and a driver, it’s kept quiet and isn’t out in the public because they don’t want the sponsor to know about it, they don’t want the fans to know about it, they just work it out. We sell our own souvenirs. We’re responsible for our own insurance. We’re responsible for our own retirement plan. We’re responsible for all the expenses incurred and we reap the benefits of all the money made. NASCAR has little bearing on how we run our team and what we’re allowed to do and what we’re not allowed to do from a business standpoint. So when we do have a problem, it’s really not NASCAR’s problem. We could debate whether the teams get the fair share of money from the TV deal. We could debate that for years and I suspect we always will debate it, but, really, you run your company independently from NASCAR, in all honesty. You rely on them to have sponsorships so they can have races and those kind of things, but your team is your team and your relationship with your owner is your relationship with your owner, it’s not NASCAR’s."
AT BRISTOL, THE 31 WAS PENALIZED FOR WHAT HE DID TO THE 48, BUT THE 24 WAS NOT FOR WHAT HE DID TO THE 2. WERE THOSE INCIDENTS DIFFERENT AND SHOULD NASCAR HAVE PENALIZED THEM BOTH THE SAME? "I’m not sure, but I don’t think Rusty Wallace hit anything and I’m pretty sure that the guy Robby Gordon spun out did hit something. So, yeah, I think they’re two totally different things. Robby Gordon had pushed the guy in front of him all the way around the race track for all but two laps under caution and, on top of that, he had all but put me in the wall on the back straightaway coming to get the green before we even got the green. So, I’m sure NASCAR looked at that and said, ’What is this guy doing?’ Then they dropped the green flag and the guy in front of him got spun out and wrecked. I’m pretty sure all those things had a play on it, but, in my opinion, you can’t compare what Jeff Gordon did to Rusty to what Robby Gordon did to the 48 car because the 48 car wrecked and Rusty didn’t."
HOW TOUGH IS TURN 2 AT DARLINGTON? "Turn 2 is certainly an interesting corner because it’s real fast. The entrance to Turn 2, it isn’t like most race tracks where Turn 1and Turn 2 are hooked together and how you do in Turn 1 determines how you do getting off the corner. This race track almost has a little straightaway between Turn 1 and Turn 2, so you’re approaching Turn 2 at a high rate of speed, then you have to make another turn to get off the corner. It’s a very difficult corner, but it’s not as hard as Turn 4. Turn 2 looks exciting and it’s faster in turn two, but, really, the hardest corner at Darlington is Turn 4."
CAN YOU ASSESS THE OVERALL PERFORMANCE OF ROUSH RACING THIS YEAR? "There’s not one thing that we’ve done that’s made our teams better. We have continued to work together with an effort to make all the teams better. There is a tremendous amount of cohesiveness and willingness to work together in the shop. Roush Racing is a nice place to be right now. We’ve got great employees. We’ve got a lot of desire. We’ve got a good group of drivers that all get along. We have everything from a real experienced driver to a guy that has very little experience and it’s just a fun place to be right now. There’s a lot of excitement around Roush Racing and I think that breeds more excitement. I can’t really speak to why the teams are running better other than we have just kept working. Specifically, with the 99 team, we’ve run great since May. I won’t apologize to anybody for how we’ve run since May, but we’ve not gotten the finishes we should have gotten. Since May, I think you could make a case that we’ve been the strongest team at Roush, but our finishes don’t indicate that."
WHAT MAKES DARLINGTON ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE TRACKS? "First of all, I love the history of our sport. I have a lot of respect for what Bobby Allison did and what the generation before him did. What they did made it possible for guys like me to come into this sport and make more money than I should ever make and, on top of that, have so much fun. Darlington, to me, represents all those things. It’s kind of like stepping back in time when you go to Darlington. You go into the offices on the back straightaway and I used to tease Jim Hunter that his office was like a time machine. When you went into his office, you stepped back about 20 years and the whole race track is like that. It doesn’t have the great suites and it doesn’t have all the pretty grass. It doesn’t have all that junk, but what it has is it has a facility that was built a long time ago and it’s put on a lot of great races with all of NASCAR’s great drivers. It’s what racing ought to be. It’s hot, it’s slippery, it’s difficult, it’s what the intent of racing is and I respect all of those things. I have a lot of reverence for it and that’s the biggest reason I like Darlington."
WHY CAN GUYS IN RACING STILL BE SUCCESSFUL IN THEIR MID-40s WHILE GUYS IN OTHER SPORTS CAN’T? "I think there are a lot of reasons. It used to be that your entry into the Winston Cup level was at a later age than it was into the NFL or into the NBA, so the amount of time you can succeed may be close to the same but you started at a later date. Experience matters in this sport. Your reaction time doesn’t slow down the way that your legs slow down when you start reaching 45. There are things that don’t affect you as much compared to a professional basketball player. They talk about Michael Jordan being old and can he do it. Well, he’s not old in our sport because it isn’t about how fast you can run up and down a court, it’s about how well can you drive a car. It’s two totally different things. From a physical standpoint, there’s no reason you can’t drive a car successfully up into the50s. Now, there are things that start happening to you from a psychological standpoint when you start to get older, I think, and you’re not willing to risk it all the way you were perhaps 38 or 40, but there’s no reason from a physical standpoint that you can’t continue to be successful into your 40s."
HOW IMPORTANT IS CONDITIONING AND WHAT DO YOU DO TO STAY IN SHAPE? "I think nutrition and fitness are not something you can mess around with. You’ve got to be prepared when you get to the race track. If you start worrying about being prepared for Darlington on the week of Darlington, you’re about three months too late. I’m certainly no physical specimen of muscle, but I have a lot of endurance. I like to think of myself as kind of like a marathon runner – I’m not real strong and I’m not real big, but I have a tremendous amount of endurance. I think that’s important. The heat doesn’t bother me very much and that’s your biggest enemy. Heat and exposure to g-loads are the two biggest things that drivers have to deal with, so your physical training and physical ability is different than it is with a basketball player or a football player. I’m sure there aren’t many football players that could sit in a car that’s 140 degrees for four hours and be able to concentrate. It’s the type of training you need to do for your sport and that’s what I work real hard at. I try to eat what I need to eat, so I can be good at what it is I do. I try to hydrate myself. I drink a lot of Powerade and a lot of water. During the race I stay hydrated. It’s important to stay hydrated before the race and during the race, but anybody that doesn’t think conditioning is important is behind the times because it’s very important."
CAN YOU CONTRAST WHAT’S EXPECTED AND WHAT’S ALLOWED AT BRISTOL AND THEN A WEEK LATER GOING TO DARLINGTON, WHAT’S ALLOWED THERE? "No one has ever asked me like that, but that’s perhaps the best way to ask. That’s a well thought-out question. You know, Ken Schrader walked down pit road a couple years ago at Bristol and he apologized to everyone before the race for hitting them [laughing]. That’s pretty much the way it is. People do things at Bristol that they don’t do anywhere else and they say, ’Oh, it’s just Bristol.’ What I say is, it’s still a driver’s responsibility. Drivers don’t have to run into each other. When a wreck happens five cars ahead of you and then that accordion effect happens and you get in the back of somebody, that’s Bristol. It’s very hard to pass. You tend to push things a little harder because it’s harder to pass. There’s no room for error, so all those things do make any little mistake that a driver makes have bigger consequences, but I don’t think there’s any doubt about it that driver’s go into Bristol saying, ’I can get by with stuff here that I can’t get by with anywhere else because I can blame it on the race track.’ I don’t think there’s any doubt about it."
DID YOUR EXPERIENCE AT SOUTH BOSTON SPEEDWAY HELP YOU AT ANY CERTAIN TRACK? "I don’t know, that’s an interesting question. I don’t know how racing at South Boston and Orange County helped mold me to make me do some things good and some things not so good. I think the main thing is the competition – not so much where you’re doing it but the competition you’re doing it against. When I was racing there, we had some pretty formidable people that we raced against. If you were gonna beat those guys, you had your work cut out for you. I think the competition is more important than where you’re doing it and I think they taught me a tremendous amount even though they didn’t know they were teaching me. The taught me to lose, they taught me to win, they taught me humility and they taught me a lot of things they didn’t set out to teach. They were just wanting to kick my butt, but when you race and you race against good people, you learn a lot from them and I think that helped me more than anything else."
COMPARE THE DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY AT DARLINGTON WITH OTHER TRACKS. "Bristol is very difficult and Darlington is very difficult. We back up to each other two of the hardest race tracks that we go to all year. The thing about Darlington that I think is misunderstood is that to be successful at Darlington, you have to attack the race track. You can’t be afraid of the race track. Through all of the hype and all the discussion about how difficult it is and how hard it is, you can’t think about it. You’ve got to go and you’ve got to say, ’I’m gonna kick your butt, race track.’ You’ve just got to attack it. You’ve got to not be afraid of it. You’ve got stand in that gas and run hard. It’s one of those things. I heard Darrell Waltrip say on TV that he couldn’t understand how the younger drivers just came here and didn’t respect the place. You have to have respect for it, but you’ve got to attack it. You’ve got to be aggressive and you’ve just got to go after that race track as if it’s any other race track. It’s hard, but if you treat it like it’s hard, you won’t have any success there."
HAVE YOU SEEN A NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE IN JACK ROUSH SINCE THE ACCIDENT? "Jack’s real close to where he was. Certainly, he’s been hurt. Even though he’s tough, he doesn’t want to admit he’s been hurt, so physically he’s not been 100 percent. I think Jack wants to let everybody know he’s OK, so he’s working really, really hard right now to show everybody he’s OK. My relationship with Jack has always been good and I’ve never had a problem in talking to Jack. I’ve always had great luck in spending time with him and explaining things the way I saw it and him explaining things the way he saw it and that hasn’t changed for me. For a while he was different because he was still hurt, but, in all honesty, I think Jack is Jack. That’s why I work for him and I hope he doesn’t change."
WHEN YOU LOOK BACK AT THAT ’97 BATTLE WITH JEFF GORDON. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY? "I’ve watched that tape several times because I got so tired of hearing all the fans saying, ’I wish you would have wrecked the 24 car.’ No, I wouldn’t have done anything different, looking back on it at all. I made the decision that I made for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that I don’t think, if I would have driven in the corner with all four wheels on the flat, which I would have had to do, that neither one of us would have made it through the corner. So, that wasn’t in my best interest – to prove a point so go wreck. I don’t have that personality. The other thing is, I truly believed I was gonna pass him anyway. I was so much faster than he was, but I what I didn’t account for was that when I had gotten so low on the race track, I picked up all the debris on the tires. But there was no doubt in my mind that he had blocked me, but when we came off Turn 2 I was just gonna pass him anyway. So I was looking to avoid contact because I had two more chances to get by him and there was no question in my mind I was going by him because we were that much faster. But when I drove into one, I picked up all that debris on the tires and I couldn’t go anywhere. I didn’t factor that in, but, no, I wouldn’t do anything different today than what I did then."
DO THE YOUNGER DRIVERS HAVE A SENSE FOR THE HISTORY OF DARLINGTON OR IS THE SOUTHERN 500 JUST ANOTHER RACE TO THEM? "I don’t know. I hate to group all the young drivers together. I think some of them probably do and some of them probably don’t. There are some older drivers that don’t care it’s the Southern 500. It’s a personal thing. I don’t know that it’s an era thing or a grouping thing, I think it’s a personal thing. To me it’s special, but to other people I know, that I’m real close to, they could care less about it. For them, it’s just another race but I’d hate to put all the young drivers in one big group and say that none of ’em care about it because I don’t believe that. I think some of them would and some of them wouldn’t."
GETTING BACK TO JACK. HAVE YOU NOTICED ANY CHANGE IN THE DAY-TO-DAY JACK? "With no disrespect, I don’t like discussing personalities. I think Jack, certainly, has to look at things differently than he did before this. There’s no way you go through a situation that he went through, which is really unusual, and not wake up in the morning with a different attitude. There’s no way in the world you don’t do that. I prefer not to get into the conversation about how I see he’s different and how I don’t see he’s different because I just don’t know if that’s appropriate, but there’s just no way you can go through an incident like that without it having a major impact on your life and it has had a major impact on Jack’s life, there’s no doubt about it."
WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO PREPARE FOR RICHMOND? "We went up there and tested the Busch car in the spring, even though we didn’t race in the spring we’re gonna race it in the fall. We thought we had a great test with the Busch car and we’re racing the Busch car at this race. The main thing we’re doing is we’re looking at our notes from what we did in the spring to try and apply that in the fall. We ran very well there in the spring. We had a great chance to win and I cut a tire and ended up getting in a wreck and still came back and finished third. We were really happy with our effort in the spring and we’ll have the Busch car up there and try some stuff on it Thursday afternoon and Friday and, hopefully, we can use that stuff on the Winston Cup car, but we don’t have a test there even though we did test there in the spring."
WHAT ABOUT TRACK SETUP FOR RICHMOND? "The track did a lot of different things this last race there. The top groove never came in. The track had a tremendous amount of grip, but when you got out of the groove, you didn’t have any grip so that changed the way you set your car up. If the track does the same thing again, it will surprise me. I think the track will open up and get the high groove working again, so that will change your setup. But if it doesn’t do that, then the setups that you ran there in the spring will work again in the fall."
FRANK STODDARD –99– CITGO TAURUS
YOU’RE PRETTY PASSIONATE ON PIT ROAD. WHAT WAS IT LIKE AT BRISTOL? "You go through a lot at Bristol. We worked ourselves up into the Top 5 and thought we had a good car and the next thing you know, you’re in an accident that we couldn’t do much about. Then you’re frantically trying to stay on the lead lap and try to salvage what you can of a finish, so it’s a range of emotions."
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT PREPARING A CAR FOR DARLINGTON? "The biggest thing you fight at Darlington is that the tire wear is generally real excessive, so to try to get a car to stay real consistent throughout a run is very difficult. You shock package and your spring package is something you really have to work on a great deal, and then one of the other elements of Darlington that you really have to put an emphasis on is making sure that your radiator doesn’t get plugged up with all the rubber that gets chewed off the tires, so to speak. You run a little bit different grille screen than you might run at other race tracks and you take and make sure you clean your radiator a little bit after practice, which you normally wouldn’t have to do at other race tracks. That’s probably the biggest factor that’s different from other race tracks is watching over the radiator at Darlington."
HAS IT BEEN FRUSTRATING TO DIAL IN THIS TIRE AT DARLINGTON? "It’s made it real difficult. All of the setups we used to use, I mean, if you pulled out something you ran three years ago and showed somebody, you’d just absolutely laugh at it. It’s not even close to what anybody runs today. People that haven’t been in this sport for the last two or three years, if I went up to a guy like Tim Brewer, who was a winner forever, and showed him what we run today, he’d be like, ’There’s no way you’re running that.’ He wouldn’t believe you. So it’s been a huge change of pace and it’s been very difficult to adapt to in a lot of areas."
YOU HAVE WON TWO STRAIGHT AT PHOENIX. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THAT TRACK? "I don’t know. For whatever reason, that track is a little bit like Loudon. We’ve always run fairly well at Loudon and have always run well at Phoenix. Even though we’ve won the last two races out there, looking back at it throughout all my notes, we’ve had a car good enough to win probably five out of the last five races out there. We’ve always run well out there, but haven’t got the finishes to show for it. It’s a track that Jeff really loves because there’s nothing special that I do, other than put the setup in the car that he feels good about. When they drop the green, he just seems to find his way to the front."
IT SEEMS THAT TRACK HAS A LOT OF OBSTACLES. "I think one of the things about that race track is that the two ends of the race track are so different. It takes a really nice, smooth driving style. I think there are a lot of ways you can get in and out of the corners, but when you find that absolute perfect spot to get in and out of the corners that is real fast, then being able to duplicate that time after time, lap after lap, probably makes a big difference. I think Jeff is able to do that. He’s as smooth as anybody that I know and watch and I think once he finds the line, he’s able to run within two inches of that line for 50 to 100 to 250 – whatever it is – consecutive laps and that’s probably a big part of it as well."
DO YOU HAVE ANY UPDATE ON THE NEW RESTRICTOR PLATE RULES? "Not really. I talked to John Darby a little bit after they went to Daytona a few weeks ago. The last thing they were working on and started to see a little progress on, I guess they didn’t get to run because it rained so they’re getting ready to go back pretty soon. They’re gonna go to either Talladega or Daytona again and try to simulate what they wanted to do the first time and didn’t get to finish. I think they’re certainly looking at some things. Obviously, we’ve got the fuel cell deal we’re gonna be debuting at Talladega this time. That ought to be some of indication of how that works will carry over to the Daytona 500, I guess."
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE INVOLVED IN SOMETHING LIKE THAT? "The last deal they had, Gary Nelson actually asked me to go. We had originally planned to go to Bristol and test around that time, so we weren’t gonna be able to do that one. It is something we like to do. At the same time, it gets to be frustrating because when you get all the manufacturers together, everybody has their own idea and every manufacturer is out to get the rules to best suit themselves, so I have no fun in that."
SO IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU PARTICIPATE OR NOT? "If something is gonna be really worthwhile out of the event, then, certainly, I always want to be there to participate in it."
http://www.fordracing.com/news/?article=20...32&flashcheck=1
SADLER PREPARES FOR TOUGH, HISTORIC TRACK
8/27/2002
POSTCARDS FROM THE ROAD
Darlington, S.C. — Elliott Sadler, driver of the No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus, has a strong sense of history regarding stock-car racing. One of the tracks he visited as a young fan was Darlington Raceway, site of this weekend’s Mountain Dew Southern 500. Darlington hosted its first NASCAR race on Sept. 4, 1950, and Sadler says he is looking forward to returning to the historic egg-shaped 1.366-mile oval. Sadler qualified sixth and finished second at Darlington in the fifth race of this season, and started sixth there in the spring of 2000 and the fall of 1999.
ELLIOTT SADLER
“I think a lot of us that grow up around Darlington Raceway enjoy going to that race track. We know what it means. I’ve been in the stands many times watching the Southern 500, so to go there and race this race is very important to us. We want to do well there – and it’s one of my better tracks. It’s a driver’s race track. It’s very slick. You really gotta manhandle your stuff all day. I really enjoy going there, and I’m looking forward to a good weekend there.”
BECAUSE THE TRACK IS EGG-SHAPED, DO YOU TRY TO SET UP THE CAR FOR ONE END, OR DO YOU TRY TO SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE? “You try to split the difference and find a happy medium – which is hard. It’s very demanding on the crew chief, but Pat [Tryson, crew chief] has been doing a great job there the last few years making sure we do get a happy medium. We’re going back with the same car we finished second there with in the spring, so we have high hopes and high expectations, and hopefully with a little bit of luck we’ll have a good weekend.”
IN ADDITION TO THE DIFFERENT CORNERS, THE TRACK SEEMS VERY NARROW… “It is. It’s very narrow. I think that’s one of the most narrow race tracks that we race on, and it’s hard to race there, but that’s why we like it.”
http://www.nascar.com/2002/news/headlines/...gton/index.html
Jarrett craves success in Southern 500
By Dave Rodman, Turner Sports Interactive August 27, 2002
2:22 PM EDT (1822 GMT)
DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Given Dale Jarrett's record at Darlington Raceway, it's a surprise that he hasn't won a Southern 500 at the legendary 1.366-mile oval.
Jarrett has a stout eight top-five finishes, including three victories, in his last 11 races at the track tabbed as "Too Tough To Tame." They include his best Southern 500 efforts in 15 starts -- third place finishes in 1997 and 1998.
But everything he has accomplished in his career, including three Daytona 500 wins and the 1999 NASCAR Winston Cup championship, would get nearly equal billing if he can win the 53rd annual Southern 500 on Sunday.
"It would be the ultimate to me to be able to win the Southern 500 and to have that victory on my resume before I call it quits," Jarrett said. "I've won big races, but I haven't won that race."
Since Jarrett won the Winston Cup Series' last superspeedway race, at Michigan International Speedway, he comes to South Carolina with high hopes and the same car with which he scored both the win at MIS and his other victory this season, at Pocono Raceway.
"We sometimes get accused of not making real smart moves when it comes to taking cars to the track," Jarrett said. "But we know what a good thing we have with this car. It is a very good race car and it runs well everywhere we've raced it this year, so we are taking the Michigan car."
Jarrett hopes his effective piece will enable him to ease one of his biggest career disappointments, which came at Darlington in 1996. Jarrett had previously won the Daytona 500 and Coca-Cola 600 and had a chance at series' sponsor Winston's "Winston Million" bonus of $1 million if he won the Southern 500.
But Jarrett hit the wall in Turn 1 on the tricky egg-shaped track, and that ended his chance at the victory in a race won by Jeff Gordon, who was in the midst of a four-straight skein of capturing the Southern 500.
Jarrett said the stifling late summer temperatures and humidity that Darlington is known to only magnify the treacherous nature of the track.
"I think the biggest thing for me when it comes to Darlington is the challenge it presents," Jarrett said. "It's so totally different. Each end of the track is so different and you have to drive both ends totally different.
"It's a difficult task to negotiate Darlington for 500 miles for a number of reasons. First the track is difficult and it's still mid-summer this time of the year there and you can expect it to be 150 degrees in the race car."
But for Jarrett, a Darlington victory would allow him to equal the mark established by his father, two-time Winston Cup champion Ned Jarrett, who won the 1965 Southern 500 by a whopping 14 laps.
"I can remember back to that day in 1965 when my dad won the Southern 500," Dale said. "It was one of the top races. When I was a kid I listed to people like my dad, Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and David Pearson talk about winning that race -- so I always knew from an early age that it was something I wanted to win."
http://www.morningnewsonline.com/MGBAE9Y5F5D.html
Aug 28, 2002
Mayfield: Darlington best shot for a win
By WADE BAKER
Morning News
DARLINGTON -- Last year at this time, things weren't exactly going the way Jeremy Mayfield envisioned.
Sure, he was part of a race team -- consisting of former Winston Cup champion Rusty Wallace -- but it wasn't the combination Mayfield was looking for.
The problems only intensified throughout the season and before Mayfield knew it, after the inaugural race at Kansas Speedway, he parted ways with the No. 12 team.
"I came from a team where it was two teams," said the 33-year-old Mayfield at Darlington recently. "It was 100 percent two teams. You know what I mean, it wasn't one. I don't think there was anything wrong with the way the other two teams were, it was just we had two separate teams.
"One was down the street from the other."
So, with seven races remaining in the season, Mayfield elected not to car hop, like some drivers do. He just walked away from the sport for an extended vacation. He could have easily picked up rides from week to week, but he knew that wasn't the type of driver he wanted to be.
Instead, he concentrated on the future.
When Sundays came, he watched the race on the television just like other fans of Winston Cup. But, when the race was over it was back to work -- trying to find another race team for the 2002 season.
His problem was short-lived when car owner Ray Evernham made his pitch to Mayfield, where he would take over Casey Atwood's ride in the No. 19 Dodge -- with Atwood moving to another car in Evernham's stable.
"It was very tough," said Mayfield. "It wasn't very tough during the week, but Sundays were really tough. What helped me get through it was Ray and I had already been talking and looking at which direction we were going in.
"I wanted to race bad, to get back out there and run. We also decided, what good was that going to do me. I'm not the type that can car hop from week to week."
When you see Mayfield hanging around the garage with a huge smile on his face don't think he's unconcerned with the race at hand that weekend. It's just finally, in a long time, he's found a team he's at ease with.
That wasn't the case with his former teammate and team of a year ago, with the constant problems always being aired into the public like clockwork.
This year, it's about having fun.
That's why you see Mayfield appearing in a humorous commercial having a woman getting into his car, trying to impress him by wearing an "Octane '93" fragrance.
"I'm having fun, I think everyone on the team is," said Mayfield. "You can look at me around the track and tell that. You can even see it in the commercials we are doing now. Sitting out the end of last year, watching races on television, I think has really made me a better person."
While Mayfield has struggled during the first half of the season, he's been paired with a teammate that's done more than revamp his career this season —— Bill Elliott.
Elliott has won two races this year, the biggest being a Brickyard 400 win in July, and is in the top-10 in points.
Mayfield has just two top-fives, while going winless and finding himself 28th in points. Not what he was looking for —— a driver with three-career Winston Cup wins —— but not totally a bad sign for the first-year Dodge driver.
"All we want is the same thing, to win," he said. "That's what we work all week to do, to get that win. As the year goes on you're going to see us get better and better."
And the best way for Mayfield to turn the freshman campaign around is by winning Sunday's 53rd running of the Mountain Dew Southern 500. In 16 career races at Darlington he's had five top-fives.
"I think Darlington is definitely our best shot at a win, in the upcoming races on the schedule," Mayfield said. "I want to win here, I really do. That would be huge —— to win the Southern 500 for Ray in our first year."
http://www.dalejr.com/story.asp
8/27/2002
Race Preview: Darlington
Jade Gurss
Dale Jr. Quotes
"The momentum is back on our side, and we’re really working well as a team right now. I think we all have stepped up and it’s paying off. Two good runs in a row is something we haven’t had since early in the season. With the way Tony Jr. (Eury, car chief) and the guys are working, it should stay that way the rest of the season. The points have gotten away from us for this year, but we’re going to end strong and work toward living up to the championship expectations in 2003...
"I used to dread going to Darlington - the people at the track even gave me a trophy for saying the surface is full of nothing but shells and garbage (it still is, by the way) -- but we have really concentrated on making the car b
