| | Associated Press
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Rusty Wallace, trying to become the first driver with consecutive victories this season, probably couldn't be in a better place than Bristol Motor Speedway.
In March, he won at Bristol for the eighth time. And, considering his Winston Cup-best seven poles this year, he figures to earn a good starting position for Saturday night's goracing.com 500.
But Wallace won't be driving "Bristol," the name he gave his winning car after taking the Food City 500 five months ago. He'll seek his sixth Bristol pole Friday in a new Ford.
"A lot of people might ask why don't you just bring the car you won the spring race with?" said Wallace, who got his 52nd career victory Sunday in Michigan. "Our answer is that this sport mandates that you keep getting better and better."
The 44-year-old driver has been doing just that, with five poles in his last 12 races. And a win Saturday night would make him the first this season with four.
But nothing would mean more to him than winning again at Bristol, which he considers his "most favorite race track of them all."
Bristol's high-banked, .533-mile, concrete layout, is a replica of the short tracks Wallace spent his Saturday nights on in the early part of his career. To him, racing on a Saturday night at Bristol is like deja vu.
"It's really a throwback to where I came from and what we did
in the early days in the sport when we ran all the half-mile
bullrings around the country on Saturday nights," he said. "Here
were running a half-mile short track on a Saturday night, too. And,
as I've always said, the track really suits my racing style -- heads
up and flat out."
Wallace will have to stick to that style to be successful again at Bristol, where tempers can explode as fast as the speeds.
A year ago, Dale Earnhardt spun out leader Terry Labonte on the final lap. Labonte slammed into the wall and Earnhardt went on to take the checkered flag.
Earnhardt insisted in Victory Lane that he wasn't trying to wreck Labonte and had nothing to apologize for. Labonte felt otherwise. But after NASCAR officials reviewed videotape of the collision from several angles, they let the race results stand.
"Tempers are a big deal at Bristol," Sterling Marlin said. "It's hard not to get mad. But if you kept a list of who you were mad at during a Bristol race, you'd need a couple of notepad pages to get them all written down."
That's why many drivers don't share Wallace's affection for Bristol. In fact, some say it's their least favorite track.
"I don't think too many of the guys in the garage are big fans," John Andretti said. "You go to Bristol and start off with this really nice, pretty car. By the time the race is over, you don't have fenders and quarter panels and your bumper is laying in the pits."
The race will be bittersweet for Andretti -- it will be the last Winston Cup event of the year for teammate Kyle Petty.
Petty is stepping out of his car for the rest of the season to drive his late son Adam's car on the Busch series. Petty is preparing to bring the car up to Winston Cup next year, which was the plan for Adam until he was killed in a May practice crash at New Hampshire International Speedway.
Steve Grissom, who drives trucks for Petty Enterprises, will take over Petty's car beginning next week at Darlington.
"Kyle is a big part of what we do and how we progress as a whole and I was worried over the fact that he would just come in on Saturday and then leave to watch the Cup race Sunday at his house," Andretti said.
"Now I can see the advantages of what he is doing. He can focus and watch how both teams function. He can do that and at the same time he can still focus on getting his team ready for next year." | |
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