SUBJECT: Pop Secret 500 California Speedway
DATE: September 5, 2004
The new Labor Day weekend event at California Speedway will be a race that goes into the memory bank of the Ford Genuine Parts and Service driver, the new crew chief, every member of the team, and the car owners and sponsors as a night a of rebirth and hope. It will be talked about and replayed many times over in the months, if not years to come. It was a race that saw a three-lap deficit turn into a very respectable 17th place finish. Everyone involved fought hard to regain every foot of the ground lost when a blown tire on the 93rd lap took the team out of the top-20 and put them back on the track 37th.
NASCAR chose not to display the yellow flag after driver Ricky Rudd reported the problem and then was forced to wait out the balance of the field before dropping to the bottom of the track to limp his way into the pits to rid his Taurus of the disintegrated tire under the green. He returned to the track two laps behind the leaders. An additional lap was lost during a series of stops under the green 63 laps later on the 159th circuit.
With only tire air pressure adjustments ordered by Crew Chief Michael “Fatback” McSwain, Ricky raced his way back into contention. With only 25 laps left in the event, Rudd moved back onto the same lap as the leaders. And, he did it the “hard” way. There was no “lucky dog” award for the #21 Wood Brothers Ford. Savvy calls from the pit box, outstanding work in the pits (including a 13.3 second pit stop for four tires and fuel) and just plain hard driving gave the entire team reason for pride and enthusiastic anticipation for the balance of the 2004 season.
After the race an obviously happy driver stated, “We had a great car tonight. It was definitely a top-ten car. I guess it must have been pretty to good to make up three laps. We got down there when we blew that tire and lost those laps, but we made it up. We’ve still got work ahead of us, but we can do it.”
And, Ricky was also visibly pleased when he exited his Motorcraft Taurus following qualifying. He told reporters, “I’m tickled to death with Fatback and all these guys on this Motorcraft team. The driver screwed up. The car felt so good. I haven’t had a car that stuck like this in so long. When I drove into turn one I said, ‘This feels pretty good,’ and I kept on going and kept on going and, stupid me, I overdrove the corner the down there and paid the price on the exit. If it hadn’t been for that we probably would have been quite a bit better. I probably lost two-tenths down in turn one, but I’m tickled to death. I’m just real pleased. We haven’t run this good or had a car feel this good in a long, long time on these bigger race tracks.”
HOW IS THE CHEMISTRY WITH FATBACK? “It’s just like riding a bike or swimming. The communication has picked right up where we sort of left off a few years ago. It’s gonna take a little while. Fatback likes to massage the cars a little differently, so it’s gonna take two or three more weekends before we get one of his cars in the system, but I can’t say enough. I needed a shot of confidence and now I’ve got something underneath of me that sticks to the race track. Race trim is another issue, but from what I’m seeing it should race well.”
Although the qualifying effort was only good for a 20th place starting spot on Sunday’s grid, it bettered the team’s efforts at the spring event in California by 15 places.
Saturday morning Ricky gave the following interview to the Ford Racing media representative: Ricky Rudd, driver of the No. 21 Keep it Genuine/Motorcraft Taurus, has been reunited with crew chief Michael “Fatback” McSwain for only one week, but he has already noticed a difference. After finishing 16th in yesterday’s practice session, Rudd qualified 20th for tomorrow’s Pop Secret 500. He spoke about a renewed enthusiasm around the team prior to Saturday’s practice. RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Keep it Genuine/Motorcraft Taurus - JUDGING FROM YOUR POST-QUALIFYING COMMENTS, YOU FELT THE CAR WAS BETTER THAN 20TH. “I’m just real encouraged because I overdrove the corner. It should have been two-tenths better than that, which would have probably put us somewhere between fifth and tenth, but I just overdrove the corner. The cars are starting to come around quite a bit. They’ve got a good, racy feel to them. We were 16th going into qualify, which is the first time all year at a track of this size that we haven’t been at the bottom of the speed chart.”
PEOPLE TALK ALL THE TIME ABOUT CHEMISTRY, BUT THERE’S REALLY SOMETHING TO IT ISN’T THERE? “There is a lot to it, but a lot of it also gets back to car construction. Every crew chief has his way of doing things and, again, it’s not that one way is terribly wrong or terribly right, but the way Fatback does his car setups suit me better when we get to the track than what we had before. We’ll only get better because the cars aren’t built from scratch the way he wants to have them built, so by the time he gets one of those cars in the system - which will maybe be Martinsville - then he knows what he’s got. Right now he’s working on somebody else’s car and he doesn’t really know what he’s got.”
YOU SAID YESTERDAY THAT IT WAS A CONFIDENCE BOOST FOR YOU. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN FROM A CONFIDENCE STANDPOINT THESE LAST FEW MONTHS. “The guys have been working. They haven’t been sitting there twiddling their thumbs. They’ve been trying to figure it out, but it seemed the more they tried the worse we got. Bristol was pretty encouraging. We had a good car and ended up getting wrecked, but it drove really well. The main thing I noticed was that in the previous year we ran in the top five and in the second race I think we broke something, but the first Bristol race this year was pretty disastrous. That’s all I’ve got to compare it to, but last week things went a lot smoother and we were poised to have a pretty good run. From a positive standpoint the cars are starting to do what I want them to do. We need to get better and it’s coming that direction pretty quick.”
HAVE YOU DOUBTED YOURSELF AT ALL THIS PAST YEAR? “Every team kind of goes through this. I can’t remember where we were but I was talking to another driver and they had been doing really well but were coming off a bad race. They were joking and saying that after the race they made sure all of the sharp objects were removed from the area because everybody is so committed to doing well. But this team had like one bad race after having many good races and it was tearing them up. We really haven’t had a good race all year and only a select few last year, so I feel with Fatback and Hoyt (Overbagh) - proven guys that I’ve worked with in the past that have gotten results - will give us a big boost. But if you go long enough, you do start doubting yourself.”
DO YOU HAVE A FEELING THAT YOU CAN WIN THE RACE TOMORROW AND IS THAT A FEELING YOU HAVEN’T HAD MUCH OF LATE? “I feel like we have a real legitimate shot at a top 10. I’ll know more after happy hour, but right now I know that what I’ve got is a lot racier than what I’ve had in quite a while. That doesn’t mean that we still can’t miss our setup. It’s a difficult race we’re coming into because we’re gonna do all of our practicing with a real cool temperature. The track is gonna be probably 65 degrees today and tomorrow it will be 130 when we’re racing, so we’ve got to be real careful not to get ourselves dialed out. So generally happy hour practice is much more reflective of what the race is gonna be like, so I’m hoping we don’t miss our setup. I guess the bottom line is that I’ve got confidence knowing that I can see we’ve kind of turned the corner. How quickly we get to where we can start talking about winning races again, I don’t know. I don’t want to rule out that it could happen this week, but, realistically, I think we need to start getting top 10s and top 5s and then we’ll talk about wins. I don’t want to put that pressure on anybody, but I definitely think you’ll see an immediate turnaround and we’ll be a legitimate top 10 contender - especially when we get Fatback’s cars in the system.”
THERE ARE AT LEAST EIGHT GUYS BATTLING FOR A SPOT IN THE TOP 10 WITH TWO RACES TO GO. AS A GUY DOWN IN THE POINTS WILL YOU BE CONSCIOUS OF THAT AND USE MORE CAUTION AROUND THEM? “You sort of put on blinders. Everybody knows you’ve got to race your own team and you’re really racing yourself to get the best performance you can. That’s the kind of question you usually get at the end of the year if there’s a points battle going on for the lead, but everybody out here has a different mission. Ours is to get the performance turned around and get some good runs. A guy in the top 10, right now their deal is they’ve still got to race but they’ve also got to be conservative to get locked into that top 10. We’re not really concerned with what’s going on in that top 10. Certainly we’d like to be there, but there’s nothing we can do about that right now other than just get our team up and running good now where we can contend for it next year. But as far as us being aware of this guy or that guy, we don’t do that. You race everybody the same. With a team like ours, if the Yates camp comes to us and says, ‘Here’s the gear ratio and stuff we have available that you can run. A majority of guys are gonna run this ratio. If you put this ratio in, you’ll turn more RPM and make more power but the longevity might be questionable.’ The guys in that top 10 hunt will probably go with a more conservative package and we’ll go with a more aggressive package. That’s really where the points situation enters into it, more so than what actually takes place on the track.”
Elliott Sadler held onto the top spot for the final 26 laps to win Sunday night over Kasey Kahne and Mark Martin.
Even though Wood Brother Racing won’t be part of the Chase for the Championship, the team is definitely looking forward to the opportunities for success during the final 11 races this season.
With only one race left before the top ten in points begin the new format to decide the season championship a number drivers moved in and out of the top spots (see below).
The final race to determine the final top-10 contenders for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series Championship will be contested at Richmond International Raceway this coming weekend. The 400-lap/300 mile event on the Virginia .75-mile oval is scheduled to take the green flag at 7:30 p.m. Live television coverage s scheduled to begin at 7:00 p.m. on TNT. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) of radio affiliates will also air the event live.
California finish 1. Elliott Sadler 2. Kasey Kahne 3. Mark Martin 4. Jamie McMurray 5. Ryan Newman 6. Carl Edwards 7. Scott Riggs 8. Dale Jarrett 9. Robby Gordon 10. Rusty Wallace 17. Ricky Rudd
Points after California 1. Jimmie Johnson 3482 2. Jeff Gordon 3432 3. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. 3366 4. Tony Stewart 3304 5. Matt Kenseth 3253 6. Elliott Sadler 3204 7. Kurt Busch 3186 8. Ryan Newman 3078 9. Kasey Kahne 3067 10. Mark Martin 3058 27. Ricky Rudd 2312
Points after Bristol 1. Jeff Gordon 3380 2. Jimmie Johnson 3356 3. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. 3305 4. Tony Stewart 3195 5. Matt Kenseth 3156 6. Kurt Busch 3051 7. Elliott Sadler 3019 8. Kevin Harvick 2923 9. Bobby Labonte 2929 10. Ryan Newman 2918
