Ricky Rudd, driver of the No. 28 Texaco/Havoline Taurus, will become the
fifth driver in NASCAR Winston Cup history to make 700 career starts when he
lines up for tomorrow's Caroline Dodge Dealers 400 at Darlington Raceway. He
made his debut on March 2, 1975, with an 11th-place finish at North Carolina
Speedway in Rockingham. Rudd holds the series' modern record of winning at
least one race in 16 consecutive seasons. Saturday morning, Rudd talked
about tomorrow's milestone, and took a look back at over a quarter century
of racing.
RICKY RUDD-28-Texaco/Havoline Taurus-
IS THIS A MILESTONE THAT YOU'VE BEEN
THINKING ABOUT?
"No. As a matter of fact, I didn't even know that 700 was
coming up until Steve Post, our p.r. guy, told me about it. Maybe someday
when you're sitting back in a rocking chair those numbers will mean
something, but right off the top of my head it really doesn't stand out as a
big milestone to me."
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE PERKS THAT COME WITH THE
LONGEVITY?
"Well, I'm still looking for the perks, I haven't found them out,
yet. Certainly not respect, that has to be earned and maintained out on the
race track, and it's no different if you're a young guy or an older guy.
It's sort of 'What have you done for us lately?' I don't know about the
perks, but the experience is awful nice. You sense things and you feel
things in the race car that only experience can help you sort through it.
You know, if you have a vibration, where'' it coming from, you've got such a
data base to pull from, 'Oh yeah, I know what that is, it's the right-front
brake rotor-it's got a crack in it. I know that because I had it happen
maybe five years ago and this is what it was.' So it helps in
troubleshooting a lot, just to have that experience. It's just hard to beat
the experience when it comes to coming to different race tracks and trying
to get the car set up for it, and handling, and you've run these race tracks
so many times you can about run them in your sleep. For that side of it, I
guess the feedback that the driver gives the crew chief probably helps in
that area. But that's pretty much the extent of it. One good thing is it
lets you know what restaurants to eat it in town because you've been coming
to these race tracks so many years you know where to stay away from, where
the good restaurants are to eat."
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE BEFORE THAT
EXPERIENCE IS GAINED?
"Some tracks, you're better off coming in to 'em as a
raw rookie because maybe you know that certain tracks - a good example is
Darlington - can jump out and bite you pretty quickly, so maybe you respect
some of these tracks a little too much, especially in qualifying trim. But
some tracks are easier to adapt than others, all these tracks have a
personality, so over the years that personality generally shows up, it
doesn't matter if you're running Goodyear's latest compound or compound
you've run here the last three years. It doesn't really matter how the
aerodynamics of the car are, the track still has similar characteristics
that you gotta pay attention to.
Darlington is a good example, I've been coming here for a long time and you
still set cars up in traffic, to pass, the same way you did when I first
started racing here. The only thing that's different here is the corners
have been flip-flopped - the 1 and 2 now is 3 and 4 and so and so. But the
places where to pass and where to do it smartly, all that pretty much stays
the same over the years."
HOW WELL DO YOU REMEMBER THAT FIRST RACE BACK IN
1975?
"I can remember leading up to the race. We actually didn't know who
was going to drive the car, my brother [Al] or myself. The car that we drove
belonged to a guy named Bill Champion. He was a independent Winston Cup
driver from the Virginia area and my brother's best friend was Bill
Champion's second cousin, that's how the relationship got built. He was
getting to retirement age and ready to step aside and he was owning his own
equipment, working on it, he was just getting pretty tired and money wasn't
flowing that good, he didn't have big sponsor, so he was looking for a
change. My brother and his friend would go and work on the cars and they
talked him into letting us go test the car. At the time we went to test it,
we didn't know who was going to drive the car, myself or my brother. And we
didn't even know we're going to get to drive the car, first, we just knew we
were going to go test it. So we took it to a local track over in Hampton,
Virginia, Langley Field, and we ran, I think, 30 or 40 laps apiece. I
might've run first, and I did okay and was pretty impressed with it. My
brother went out and ran, he was pretty fast, impressed with it - but he
spun out two or three times, so I got the job then. We didn't know it at the
time, he said, 'How'd you like to run next week's race?' and that's kind of
how it got going."
SO, YOU DIDN'T HAVE A CHANCE FOR IT TO SINK IN.
"Right.
Matter of fact, this was on a Tuesday, two days later we're on our way to
Rockingham. I'll be honest, I didn't even know what all the flags meant.
There was a lot of flags. Of course, I knew what the red, green, white and
checkered were because that was the same in go-karts, but they had flags
with crosses on them, black flags - I didn't even know what all those flags
meant when I started my first race."
WHEN DID THIS BECOME A REGULAR DEAL FOR
YOU?
"Well, I ran Rockingham. We were lucky, came out of there finished
11th, went on to Bristol, Tennessee, and finished 10th. I think I went to
Atlanta. I think I ran three races that year. First race, I knew right away
I had a whole lot to learn. I mean it was quite different from anything I
had been in. I'd been used to sort of being at the top of my field, I raced
go-karts, won national championships, I won a lot of motorcycle races, and
first time I'm in a car, period, I'm in a Winston Cup race at Rockingham.
And I was a cocky kid, 18 years old, you know, on top of the world, but I
realized real quick I had a lot to learn after that first race, even though
I finished 11th, I said, 'There's a big learning curve in front of me.' But
I kind of glad it was that way. Had I gone out there and made it easy, I
probably would've done something different. It was a big challenge in front
of me and it took many, many years to really get comfortable in the car."
HAVING RACED AT OTHER LEVELS, IS THIS SOMETHING THAT YOU WANTED TO DO?
"At
the time, all's I knew is I wanted to be - to be honest, when I was about 16
I was still racing go-karts and motorcycles, and I didn't really follow
racing, in general, I was so busy, I was racing a couple of times a week,
motorcycles or karts - mainly motorcycles at that time, karts in the early
and back into motorcross the later years. I was racing a couple of times a
week, and I knew that I wanted to be a professional driver. Motorcycles were
good, but that was an option. My No. 1 choice at that time, 16 years old,
was Indianapolis, that's where I wanted originally to go. Formula I seemed
like it was something I wanted to do but it was so distant. So, I wanted to
be in the Indianapolis 500 when I was about 16. Of course, that didn't
happen, it wasn't in the cards. A couple of years later, the Cup thing
worked out and at that time I really didn't have any long-term plans. This
happened to become available, let's go try it. It was great because I was
wanting to do something besides the motorcycles and the karts, I wanted to
move into cars but I didn't really know how, and didn't really know what
kind of cars, and all of a sudden, here's an opportunity, and it happened to
be in Winston Cup, top of the line. But at that time, I didn't really know
the different divisions, I didn't know that Cup was the top of the line. So,
really, I was pretty doggone unaware of what I was getting into."
WHAT
MILESTONES DO STICK OUT TO YOU?
"That was the start, but family after that,
one year my dad [Al, Sr.] put up the money and helped us build race cars, my
brother obviously helped, he built motors, it was a family deal for a couple
of years. That was big thing, we won rookie of the year [1977], that was
probably the first milestone. The next step in my career was to leave the
family deal and go drive for Junie Donlavey in 1979. And when I went to
Junie I had only run a handful of races because we didn't run a full
schedule, some of the short tracks I never had been to before. So Junie was
like a driving instructor that year in '79, so I learned a lot from him. And
then there was another lean year or two along the way. And then in '81,
probably running a family car at Charlotte and sitting on the outside pole
there. The car had sat all year, and basically took the car, and Linda and I
moved down to North Carolina, and D.K. Ulrich let us use the shop, and the
last minute Harry Hyde helped us, and Jimmy Makar was a young guy coming
along - that story's been told a hundred times. But anyway, that was a
pretty big milestone because I sat on the outside pole and fourth at
Charlotte. What that did was DiGard Racing, Gatorade, at that time, was one
of the biggest teams in racing. Darrell Waltrip was leaving that team to go
drive for Junior Johnson, and that ride became available and they called me
to come drive for them. So, that was a big milestone - even though I was
nowhere near ready for that, I only had 20, 30 races under my belt,
probably, at that time. I wasn't ready for it but was either take that ride
or go back and work in my dad's junk yard. And it wasn't that that was a bad
thing to do, it was work, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. The DiGard ride
became available, and again, I was ready for it, I didn't have enough
experience for it, but took it, and that's what opened the doors. We didn't
win anything that year, but we learned a lot that year.
"I came back in '82 and '83 and Richard Childress decided not to drive his
own car anymore, he was going to be a car owner. It wasn't the operation
that it is today, it was just him, really, an independent operation that top
10 was a great finish for him. So we went over there and won poles in '82
and then in '83 we came out and won two race. Winning my first race at
Riverside probably stands out. After that, the next wins that stand out to
me, the Brickyard 400 in '97 with an owner-driver situation. I was fortunate
that there were a lot of big rides along the way that I took. I don't know
where the final chapter is."
BIGGER PICTURE, WHAT ABOUT WINNING AT LEAST ONE
RACE FOR 16 CONSECUTIVE YEARS?
"When you talk about numbers and streaks, to
me that means more to me than just 700 starts. I guess, to go back, I was
pretty successful in all the racing I did - as most everybody who gets to
the Winston Cup level, they all were champions, usually, from some other
form of racing. Just to be there to start the race, that never would've
appealed to me but the 16-year win streak, which is a, I guess, a modern
record today, that means more to me, number-wise, even at 16 than the number
700 means to me right now."
ARE THERE MORE COMPARISONS OR DIFFERENCES IN
NASCAR RACING NOW VERSUS WHEN YOU STARTED IN 1975?
"It changed. Back in that
era, you didn't race for money, it wasn't about money, it was about wanting
to beat the competition, wanting to do well, and wanting to drive a Winston
Cup race cars, and a hundred dollars a week. I made that for a good part of
the early part of my career, that was all the money I made and tickled to
death to make that money - never seemed to lack for anything. Traveled a lot
rougher than we do today, at the time we didn't realize it. There were no
airplanes, it was hop in the car, it didn't matter if we were racing in
California, you hopped in a van and you drove to California. You didn't have
the big semis. You'd put five, six people in the hotel rooms. You did that.
Guys today, they got it pretty good, but I wouldn't trade those early years
for nothing. I wouldn't go back and re-live 'em, but it gave me a whole lot
more respect and appreciation. Now, race drivers make good money, it's a
welcomed benefit, it's a luxury that I didn't - I never got in the sport for
the love of money, I got in it for the love of racing. I think some people
get in the sport today because they love the money, and racing's a way to
get there. It's just a different time era. It's good now, it was good then.
It's a lot busier now than it used to be. As a driver, there's things to do
seven days a week. And the sacrifices now that you make, back when I got
going, we were off Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesday. Thursday was a travel day,
drive day, and we would drive to the race track just in time to get there
because we didn't have money for a hotel room to stay there on a Thursday
night before practice began on Friday so we would time it just right. My
wife would drive a good part of the way, I'd drive the other part, that's
how we did it. After the race you hopped in the car and you drove home. But
Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays were your days to do whatever you wanted to
because there was no big interest in the sport, you didn't have press things
to do. The fans, I met a lot of good friends over the years because the fan
base wasn't that big. You'd go to a qualifying deal like, say, we were here
at Darlington on Friday and how many thousands of people will be in the
stands, but in the early days there were maybe 10 or 20, and you usually
knew them on a first-name basis, so it's been interesting to see the
change."
One of the pleasant Ford surprises during the first four races of 2001 has
been the performance of Robert Pressley and his Jasper Motorsports team.
After three consecutive top-20 finishes to start the season, Pressley found
himself a career-best eighth in the NASCAR Winston Cup standings. Even
though a 36th-place effort in Atlanta last weekend dropped him to 17th,
Pressley and crew chief Ryan Pemberton go into this weekend's Carolina Dodge
Dealers 400 with a great deal of confidence.
ROBERT PRESSLEY --77-- Jasper Engines and Transmissions Taurus --
ARE YOU
HAPPY WITH THE WAY THINGS HAVE STARTED?
"I'm really happy. I guess there
are some people who are really surprised or wondering what we're doing, but
I honestly think we're on the same track we were last year. The only
difference is that at Daytona this year we missed the big wreck. We had
some loose lugnuts during the race and what we thought was bad luck turned
into something good because we missed the big wreck. The next week at
Rockingham we had a great car and finished 12th and at Vegas we had a good
run all day and stayed on the lead lap until 10 to go. We had a little bad
luck at Atlanta, but we'll bounce back from that. What we're trying to do
is prevent those little things that took us out of races last year. It's a
lot easier on me and Ryan because we're able to communicate a lot better.
At this same time last year we were still trying to learn each other, but if
Ryan tells me to do something, I do it. He knows what I want and I know how
he works, so that's where we've really made some improvement over last
year."
HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU SEE YOURSELF AMONG THE TOP 10 IN POINTS?
"Honestly, I know there are a lot of great teams that have gotten off to
slow starts, but there are some teams in front of us that we feel we can
beat. I don't think it matters if its three races or 33 races, if we can
consistently be in the top 15, then we're gonna be there in the points at
the end of the year. We don't want to run good and then run bad. We want
to be consistent. If we do that enough, then we're gonna start getting top
fives and then the thing we all want is that first win."
DO YOU FEEL YOU
HAVE SOMETHING TO PROVE?
"I don't think I have anything to prove to my
fellow competitors because I've raced with all these guys back in the Busch
Series. I think everybody in here respects everybody else in Winston Cup.
Maybe it's different for the media, the promoters or the owners, but I don't
feel I have anything to prove to anybody. I'm happy with what this race
team has done. We took it from being a team that was just a race team to
one that has moved into the middle of the pack. Our next step is to bring
it into a top 10 and then eventually make it a winning team every week."
YOU'VE COMBINED ENGINE PROGRAMS WITH PENSKE, BUT DO YOU STILL CONSIDER
YOURSELF A SINGLE-CAR TEAM?
"Yeah, we really are a single-car team. What
we do with the Penske-Jasper engine deal is they furnish our engines. Some
of our guys left our motor program and went to work for Penske and a merger
was made, so they furnish the motors. We don't have any other connection
with them, except Ryan and Robin are brothers. Ryan is doing a lot of
things that he wants to do and I think he asks Robin for advice when he
needs it, but they hired me to drive this car four years ago and that was a
small piece of what this team needed. The next thing is they went through a
couple of crew chiefs until they found Ryan. That was the next piece of the
pie that we needed to make this a great race team and now they've merged the
engine program. We've got all the ingredients here and now we've got to
stir 'em up and bake it to see how it comes out."
WHAT ABOUT DARLINGTON?
"I have not had a good Winston Cup finish at Darlington. I've led a lot of
laps in the different Winston Cup cars I've been in and I've won two Busch
races there. I love Darlington. This is a new year and we're in much
better shape as far as the points, so we can go there and get a race setup
instead of worrying about just getting in the race."
RYAN PEMBERTON, Crew Chief --77-- Jasper Engines and Transmissions Taurus --
WHAT'S BEEN THE KEY TO YOUR START?
"We've just been consistent in not
taking ourselves out of the game. We're running like we were last year, but
the difference is that we haven't dug a hole. When we left Atlanta last
year we were really suffering with two DNFs and were 28th in points, so the
key for us has been to not take ourselves out of the game. We tried to do
that last year, but it takes a long time to get all of the bugs worked out
of everything. We ran good at Rockingham in the fall and Atlanta in the
fall and the key is not falling out of races, that's been the biggest
thing."
IS THAT REALLY THE KEY, JUST FINISHING RACES?
"What do they say,
'To finish first you first must finish.' We had a lot of runs last year
where we were competitive and didn't finish the race and that's the biggest
thing for us right now. We need to be consistent and not take ourselves out
of the game and you'll see us in a much different position in points than we
were last year. We've got the capability and know that we can run in the
top 15 at any race track at any time. We're trying to log those top-15s and
get ourselves in a good position in points and if we can do that, I think
it'll eventually help our qualifying efforts. We used to have to be so
conservative on how we qualified. We couldn't be too aggressive because of
where we were in points. We were right in the middle where it can be pretty
dangerous, so if we can maintain a decent spot in the standings, we can
maybe go and be a little more aggressive and try to have some really good
qualifying efforts. It would be nice to know that if something happens and
you don't get a good lap, it's not the end of the world. That's where we
want to be."
WHAT'S THE FEELING BEEN LIKE AT THE SHOP?
"It's almost like,
'Finally, we're coming away from these race tracks with finishes that we
deserve.' We feel like we're not getting robbed of our finishing positions,
we're just getting what we deserve. There's definitely a better feeling
than being where we were this time last year and it's kind of exciting for
the guys on the team. We've got a lot of new guys that haven't been in this
sport that long or guys who have been around but have never been in this
situation, so it feels good. Sometimes all it takes is a little momentum to
get you on a roll and the next thing you know, you're one of those top guys.
Michael Waltrip is a prime example. He's won a race and been real
competitive ever since and I don't think a lot of people would have thought
that from him. I'd definitely like to have that one win under our belt like
he has, but we've run fairly good so far and I think just having that hope
that we can be like him or be up front and stay there all year is a great
feeling because it pumps everybody up."
CAN YOU STAY AROUND THE TOP 10 ALL
YEAR? "I think we can be close to the top 10 if we just do what we've been
doing. We'll have to definitely step up our performance to be in the top
10, but sometimes all it takes is a little momentum and a little bit of
confidence. The pit crew is doing good. The cars are great, so we
definitely have the team capable of doing that but now we have to put it all
together. I need to get better at working with Robert. We need to answer
questions faster about the race car and improve on where we're running. We
can run in the top 15. Now we need to take a 10th to 15th-place car and
make it a seventh to 12th-place car and then we can be in the top 10 in
points. It's going to take a lot of work, but I feel we have the ability to
do that."
