August 4, 2004 - The Brickyard 400 has been an annual fixture on the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series schedule for 10 years and as the speedway prepares to host this weekend's event, Ford Racing asked some of its drivers their thoughts on how things have changed since the inaugural race in 1994.

Ricky Rudd


RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus -- WHAT CHANGES HAVE YOU SEEN IN THIS RACE OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS? "Probably the biggest thing that has changed has been the setups on the race cars themselves. They've become a lot more complex over the years. The guys get smarter and smarter on aerodynamics and it's more about aerodynamics than it is anything right now. You've got to put the springs under the car to keep the aerodynamics of the car working correctly. When we won here in '97 it was headed in that direction, but not to the extent it is today. It was more about you put chassis under the car to make good corner grip. Sometimes the two were not always the same."
HOW MUCH HAS THIS RACE EVOLVED IN 10 YEARS FROM A STATUS STANDPOINT? "I think as time has gone on - for a while there everyone was thinking about Daytona and Indy were almost equal to one another or maybe Indy was starting to outshine Daytona a little bit. But I think as time has gone on, a little bit of the novelty of running at the Brickyard has sort of worn off just a little bit. It's still a very important race, don't get me wrong, but I'd say it's second behind the Daytona 500 as far as importance and financial rewards. The nostalgia of coming to Indy is still there, but guys kind of get complacent with it a little bit."
DO YOU FEEL WHEN NASCAR CAME TO INDY THAT IT BROUGHT THIS SPORT TO ANOTHER LEVEL? "Yeah, I really felt that. We came here years ago - it had to be the early nineties or late eighties - and there were five or six teams that were invited here by Goodyear for a tire test. I was fortunate in that I was one of the first guys to hit the race track with a stock car. That was a pretty neat event that day and there was a lot of camaraderie in the garage area. You could tell that everybody knew that they were participating in an event that was gonna go down in the history event. Even though it was several years later before we came back here and raced, we knew it was probably a pretty important test. Everybody was really loose that day and enjoyed themselves and we all hoped we would be back here to race and, sure enough, we did."
CHICAGO, CALIFORINIA, KANSAS - ALL OF THOSE PLACES HAVE BEEN ADDED RECENTLY. WAS INDY THE START OF THAT GROWTH? "You know, it had been quite a while since we had been to any new race tracks. You really can't put Indy and Chicago in the same category just because of the historical value of Indianapolis, but when it was announced that we were gonna be here, there probably wasn't one competitor in the garage area that wasn't really excited about it. To me, it was like stock car racing had sort of made it to the big-time - not that it wasn't before, but that sort of took it to a different category once we came to the Brickyard the first time."
IT'S MORE NATIONAL NOW. "You have to look back. At the time, nothing else was raced here but the Indianapolis 500, so to all of a sudden have the stock car boys up here it was a little bit, I wouldn't say the word would be intimidating, but I think everybody had a lot of respect for all the open-wheel guys that had made this place such the historical landmark that it is today. There may have been a few ruffled feathers from some of the fans, but I think the true fans found out that we weren't here to compete against the open-wheel guys. Like basketball and football, they're two different sports even though they're played with a ball. That's sort of the way I think that the stock car guys were able to step in and have success without stepping on the toes of the Indy car guys."