Against the grain
Morgan-McClure bucks recent trends with single-car team and 40-something driver

by Allen Gregory
The Bristol Herald Courier,March 28

The days of single-car teams and 40-something drivers are rapidly vanishing in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.

Just don't tell Mike Wallace that.

The 45-year-old St. Louis native is in his first full season as the driver of the No. 4 Lucas Oil Chevrolet for Abingdon-based Morgan-McClure Motorsports.

"Everybody talks about all these young drivers," Wallace said. "If anybody has more heart, desire and passion to run well than me, I'd like to see him."

That type of determination was a big reason why MMM general manager Larry McClure selected Wallace, the younger brother of Cup star Rusty Wallace, to drive the final three races of the 2004 season and brought him back for 2005.

While Wallace has yet to post a headline-grabbing finish for the struggling team, he sees plenty of reason for optimism.

"Morgan-McClure has won a lot of races in the past," Wallace said. "The last few years haven't been as successful, but now I have the opportunity to help them though this rebuilding process.

"We are trying get things back on track and win races again."

Entering Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, Wallace ranks 36th in Nextel Cup points with no top 10 finishes in four races. Wallace must climb into the top 35 to lock in a starting position under NASCAR's new qualifying arrangement.

"I guess my little brother Kenny put it best when he said we are solid 22nd to 24th place car," Wallace said. "It's just a process of moving forward now.

"The stats may not show it, but we are getting there. Everybody is working well together."

750 turn out to pay tribute to Eldora icon
New owner Tony Stewart among those with kind words for former owner Baltes

by Mike Bennett
Palladium-Item,March 28

Earl Baltes built it, and they came.

(Palladium-Item/Joshua Smith)

Hundreds of racing fans and racers paid homage to that fact during a tribute to him and his wife, Berneice, Saturday afternoon at Eldora Speedway.

New owner Tony Stewart did, too.

He told of flying over the track after last July's Kings Royal, which drew a crowd of 25,000.

"To see the cars leaving ... all their lights and taillights. It was like watching a scene from 'Field of Dreams,'" Stewart said.

Stewart told the crowd of 750 he feels fortunate to own the track Baltes opened in 1954 and guided to become the most revered dirt track in the world.

"There's no other place like it," said the NASCAR star from Columbus, Ind.

The 83-year-old Baltes said the track's success -- that allowed payouts that topped $1 million at times -- was because of hard work and lots of help from family and longtime employees.

He reminisced about living through the Depression and the numbers of his friends and fans that have since passed on.

"One hundred have put their ashes on the track," he said, before joking, "it's quite spooky sometimes."

Baltes was known for meticulously grading his track, sometimes for hours on race days.

Racer Chick Hale of New Madison was there for the first night of racing in 1954 and didn't stop for good until last year.

He didn't race that first night, though, because his car didn't conform to Baltes' rules.

"The boss was the boss. You listened," Hale said.

Even Stewart drew Baltes' wrath a few times.

"Now I can go as fast as I want," Stewart joked about driving his four-wheeler through the pits.

Stewart found out quickly the pit falls and pressures of being a track owner Saturday. His first scheduled event was rained out.

Singing the praises of Bristol Motor Speedway
By Monte Dutton
Gaston Gazette,March 28

There are no more anxiously awaited Nextel Cup races than the two held annually at Bristol Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Food City 500.

While a ticket to the August night race is a bit tougher to procure, this week’s race has been sold out, as usual, well in advance. Fan polls invariably rate Bristol as the circuit’s most popular track.

Yet the imposing little track in the mountains doesn’t seem to get the credit it deserves. It’s difficult to avoid some amusement when national magazines touch on the subject of “tough tickets” and intimidating venues without mentioning Bristol.

Think the ACC basketball tournament is tough to see in person? If you want to attend that event — or at least most of it — just hang out at the exits when the fans of first-round losers are returning to their vehi-cles. Getting a ticket for the rest of the carnival at face value is no problem. Bristol, on the other hand, will draw more than 100,000 for Saturday’s Busch Series race. Many fans will roll into town with no assurance of seeing the Sunday race, and they won’t be too disappointed if they have to settle for Saturday live and Sun-day via television.

The retired car owner Bud Moore once described Bristol disparagingly as “a damn pinball machine,” add-ing, “It ought to be against the law to have more than two dozen cars running around that place at the same time.”

But 43 cars will start both of the weekend’s races, and many of them won’t last too long at the track where Sterling Marlin described the racing as “jet planes in a gymnasium.”

There are too many cars going too fast in too small a space. That, in a nutshell, is what makes the fans love it.

“It’s one of my favorites,” said Tony Stewart, “but Bristol is a track that’s feast or famine. If you have a really good day, it’s a lot of fun, but if you have one little problem, it normally makes for a very long day.”

Petty complaints
By Jerry Bonkowski
March 28

Richard Petty has spent almost his entire life chasing the checkered flag, first as a driver and now as a team owner. As one of the legends of stock car racing and the all-time NASCAR wins leader (200), his opinions carry more weight than most current or former drivers.

That's why when The King has something on his mind, people listen, particularly when it comes to one of his favorite subjects: respecting the history and tradition of NASCAR. At 67 years old, Petty has seen the sport grow from its infancy into the billion-dollar enterprise it is today.

The North Carolina native believes that younger drivers – particularly those who have entered the sport in the last few years – may not always hold in such high value what has made NASCAR what it is today.

Petty recently talked about these topics, and also the impact of some of his own contributions upon the sport's legacy. Here are some excerpts from that conversation:

Question: You are very vocal about how some of today's younger drivers either don't understand or don't respect NASCAR's history and tradition. Can you talk about that?

Richard Petty: "There are some young kids who come in and don't really realize what this sport means or where it came from. They don't appreciate the history of NASCAR and stock car racing. And what's more, a lot of them didn't have to come up the hard way like most of the guys from my era and even some of the older guys still racing today, like Mark [Martin] and Rusty [Wallace] and Sterling [Marlin] and Terry [Labonte] and guys like that, had to come up."