Martinsville fights to keep NASCAR races
By Robert Daski
Lynchburg News & Advance,April 7

Martinsville Speedway is the second-oldest active NASCAR Nextel Cup track behind Darlington Raceway. Darlington has already lost the prestigious Southern 500 and is the latest in a line of Carolina race tracks that have been stripped of races.

In today's era of expansion, Martinsville's long-term status of hosting two NASCAR Nextel Cup races is open for debate.

"I'd like to see both races stay at Martinsville, but I don't really see it long-term," said driver Jeff Burton, a South Boston native. "Martinsville has a place in our sport, but I see them losing at least one race. I'm not pushing for that."

Martinsville, a Cup track since 1956, faces more scrutiny than ever to maintain its facility and stay parallel to the changing times.

"The thing I'm most proud of throughout the history of the speedway is we have stayed on par with the growth of NASCAR," Martinsville Speedway president Clay Campbell said. "It's never been a factor where we've said we're behind, we got to catch up.

"We've done a great job doing what's necessary on the competitors' side, the fans' side, the media side, and at every piece of the puzzle, we've succeeded at meeting those goals."

The speedway's upgrades since 2000 include eight new suites, new concessions, a press box, an underground pedestrian tunnel in turn one, a 20-bay garage area that holds 42 Nextel Cup cars and an infield care center.

The speedway has also undergone two major renovation projects. In 2002, a second groove was added to expand a tight surface to give drivers more room to pass. Last spring, a new concrete and asphalt surface was installed when a hole the size of a baseball was exposed in turn three, forcing the race to be delayed.

Lights will be installed for the return of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour on Sept. 3 when the track hosts a 250-lap race, its first at night.

The railroad behind the backstretch has been moved to enable the speedway to extend its grandstand seating.

Grandstand expansion is critical to Martinsville's future. The speedway seats only 63,000, not the 91,000 listed in NASCAR's previous media guides. Tickets usually remain available in the week leading up to races, but Martinsville is on a 20-year streak for selling out at least one race.

"Everything we've done has proven we plan on staying around for a long time," Campbell said. "The key to any track's continued success is people in those grandstands and luckily we've been able to do that. We've had sellouts consecutively for the past 20 years. The key is the fans and we've been successful with that. It's worked well."

One finger: 25 points, $10,000
April 7

One finger has cost Shane Hmiel 25 points and $10,000.

The incident with Dale Jarrett happened during the Busch Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Monday.

Hmiel caused the last of 14 cautions during the race when Jarrett slowed to avoid an accident, then was hit from behind by Hmiel.

Jarrett got out of his car and walked half the front stretch to Hmiel's car to confront him. Jarrett's day was over, and Hmiel went on to a 12th-place finish.

After Jarrett leaned in and pointed a finger at Hmiel, Jarrett turned and walked away.

Hmiel then flipped his middle finger at Jarrett.

If it wasn’t for that pesky in-car camera, Hmiel might have gotten away with it. Unfortunately the image was shown on live television.

Rusty to defend short track title
By Godwin Kelly
Daytona Beach News Journal,April 7

It's been a year since Rusty Wallace's last NASCAR Nextel Cup victory.

This weekend the series takes Wallace back to the tiny, paperclip shaped Martinsville Speedway where he celebrated his 55th, and last, big-league triumph.

After a strong run last Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway, Wallace is locked and loaded to make another run for the roses at the .526-mile bullring.

The 48-year-old veteran said he could have won Bristol's Food City 500 if not for a flat tire in the second half of the race.

Despite bending sheet metal on his No. 2 Dodge, Wallace finished 13th and stayed at ninth in the all-important points standings.

This week he hopes not only for another strong run, but to defend his Advance Auto Parts 500 title at Martinsville, which is described as two short drag stripes connected by hairpin turns.

"I'm very optimistic going into it," Wallace said. "The car that I'm taking is the same car I had last time. It's got a fresh body on it. It's been all rebuilt and all updated and all tricked up."

And the driver is totally psyched for the grueling 500-lap run on the tiny piece of Virginia real estate.

The clock is ticking on Wallace's career. At the end of this season, Wallace will retire as a full-time Nextel Cup driver and concentrate his efforts on his growing business empire, which includes a Busch Series team and car dealerships.

Wallace has always excelled on NASCAR's short tracks, where he's earned nearly half his career total victories.

He has seven wins at Martinsville and had his 10th career victory at Bristol in sight before his tire went bad. In addition, he has seven wins at Richmond.

With a pair of short-track races back-to-back, the scheduling will likely work in Wallace's favor since he has a special touch for these kinds of venues.

"Short tracks are one of the things that I love the most," he said. "I really love the short tracks."

Childress keeps going forward
By Ed Hinton
Orlando Sentinel,April 7

When he was 5 his father died. He earned his lunch at school by sweeping up the cafeteria after the other children had gone out to play. He worked weekends, selling popcorn and Cokes at the local stock car races.

By high school nobody could figure out how a kid that poor could afford a new Chevrolet Impala on the salary from an all-night gas station in Winston-Salem, N.C.

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Secretly he was "in the liquor business," as they still say of moonshine running in North Carolina.

He never stoked a still, never outran revenuers - his job was a lot more dangerous than that.

The high-speed "trippers" would park their laden cars at the station late at night, and leave. Then the kid would get in and drive at the speed limit, into the tough neighborhoods, delivering to the "drink houses," private homes that doubled as saloons.

You have it that hard, that young, you don't quit anything easily.

He did quit the liquor business, the morning he walked in on a raging argument and saw - up close and personal - one guy waste another with a sawed-off shotgun.

That's the only time Richard Childress has ever given up at anything that I know of.

Childress will turn 60 in September, and is by now enormously wealthy, yet the pattern of his being remains intact from childhood:

The harder he has it, the harder he tries.

Last year, Richard Childress Racing, the team that had turned Dale Earnhardt into a living legend and then been devastated by his death, went winless.

Critics whispered that RCR might never be back, that perhaps Childress himself had lost his hunger and focus. Maybe he was distracted too much by his ranch in Montana, his vineyards in North Carolina, his winery, his big-game hunting in Africa. ...

By last week the losing streaks had reached 54 races for RCR overall, and 55 for lead driver Kevin Harvick. And Harvick's crew chief, Todd Berrier, was sitting home under a four-race suspension. To bottom it all out, Harvick had to start dead last at Bristol, Tenn., after his team had to replace a power-steering pump on Sunday morning.

All of that put Childress precisely where he needed to be: in Harvick's pit, directly in charge.