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April 9
Scott Riggs took heed of his father's advice prior to his qualifiying run Friday at Martinsville.
And as the saying goes: father knows best.
"All my dad kept preaching to me before qualifying was just be smooth, be smooth, don't slip the car," Riggs said. "Don't be too aggressive, be smooth with it and you'll be good. You know, we ended up sitting on the pole with probably the ugliest lap I've ever had out there."
Riggs toured the shortest, slowest track in Nextel Cup racing at 96.671 mph, sending Martinsville master Ryan Newman to the outside of the front row. Newman, the track record-holder, qualified at 96.657.
At each end on the first lap, Riggs said, he went too hard into the corners, had to collect the car and sailed off into the straightaways.
"I said, 'There's one lap gone,"' he said.
Instead, that was the lap that won him the pole in his 41st start in the Nextel Cup Series, making him only the 12th driver to earn the top starting spot in NASCAR's top three circuits. He has won five poles in the Craftsman Truck Series and two in the Busch Series.
Newman, who has 29 poles in 122 starts and started in the top 10 in all six previous visits to Martinsville, had the fastest car in practice, but cloud cover and a 30-minute delay for drizzle slowed the track down.
"You can't get the pole every time," he said. "We got beat by three-thousandths of a second, but I've won 'em that close before, too."
Finally, Rudd gets his break in qualifying
By Nate Ryan
Richmond Times Dispatch,April 9
As the sun disappeared behind the clouds above Martinsville Speedway yesterday, Ricky Rudd's star-crossed season finally found a ray of light.
With an assist from Mother Nature in a pressure-packed atmosphere, NASCAR's Ironman turned the 13th-fastest lap for tomorrow's Advance Auto Parts 500 and ensured a 758th consecutive start in a Nextel Cup Series streak that dates to January 1981.
Rudd's chances certainly improved when the sky suddenly turned overcast just before his Ford took the green, cooling the surface of the 0.526-mile oval.
Qualifying under sunny conditions and on a slicker track, the two drivers just ahead of Rudd in the qualifying order were 31st (Michael Waltrip) and 43rd (Robby Gordon) on the speed chart.
"We needed all the help we could get, so I guess the racing gods were in our favor today," Rudd said, climbing out of his car with a relieved shrug and a small smile after his best qualifying effort since Daytona. "We've been going to Martinsville since the late '70s, and I probably never felt more pressure than what I felt today. I tried to block it out."
The Chesapeake native drew a roar from a home-state crowd when his No. 21 flashed into the No. 5 spot on the scoring tower midway through the session. The 48-year-old credited his Wood Brothers Racing crew with preparing a car that might have challenged pole-sitter Scott Riggs (95.864 mph). Ranked 37th in the standings, Rudd was racing without the top-35 safety net of a guaranteed spot.
"The real pressure was how hard do you go after the pole," Rudd said. "We go for it, and I slip up and foul up the lap, then we miss the race.
Waltrip fails to qualify as career winds down
April 9
Darrell Waltrip forced a smile but his quivering lip kept him from hiding his disappointment after failing to qualify for today's NASCAR Trucks Kroger 250 at Martinsville Speedway, the race that was supposed to have been his last as a driver.
He hinted that he might enter at least one more race before ending a career that has seen him win three Nextel Cup championships and 84 Cup races.
"Maybe next time," he said. "It can't be your last race if you didn't race."
He said his truck was just too loose in qualifying to be fast enough to make the field.
"It turned sideways going into (Turn) 1 and that killed my lap," he said. "I couldn't do anything with it, so I'll go home."
reigning NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion Bobby Hamilton turned a lap at 95.098 mph earned him the pole for Today's Kroger 250 at Martinsville Speedway (1:15 p.m. Eastern, Speed), a track where Hamilton has won in both Trucks and the Nextel Cup series.
"It's very, very close here in qualifying. It's always been like that here at Martinsville," said Hamilton, the series points leader. "A wiggle of the steering wheel or a slip of the tires will cost you dearly here.
The pole is the fifth in Hamilton's career. His last pole came in the 2003 season finale at Homestead, Fla.
Hamilton was fast out of the box at Daytona, but he had to battle back from problems in his past two races to secure his strong finishes.
At California "we went two laps down because it was running hot and I almost killed the motor, came back and finished second," he said.
Respecting your elders
Driver etiquette is a problem for NASCAR, but the lack of respect young drivers have for old ones is a bigger one
By John Sturbin
Fort Worth Star-Telegram,April 9
There is a fine line between being flippant and flipping someone off.
For NASCAR driver Shane Hmiel, that has translated into a monetary fine, a points deduction and potentially even more damaging -- a loss of respect in the garage area.
NASCAR fined Hmiel $10,000 and docked him 25 driver's points Wednesday after an in-car camera caught him flipping his middle finger at Dale Jarrett during a Busch Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Monday.
Four days later, Jarrett said he was right in approaching Hmiel's car during a red-flag stoppage of the Sharpie Professional 250. And Hmiel issued a statement at Martinsville Speedway in which he apologized to the fans -- "especially the children" -- and to Jarrett.
"I have a tremendous amount of respect for Dale," said Hmiel, who is entered in today's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Kroger 250. "He has proved he is a great race driver. He has won a championship, two [actually three] Daytona 500s and numerous other races. There is no way I meant to hit him. It was simply five laps to go at Bristol. Things happen so fast and with everyone wrecking in front of us, it played out that Dale ended up with a torn-up race car. I hate that it happened."
Jarrett slowed to avoid an accident and was hit from behind by Hmiel (pronounced MEEL). Jarrett hurriedly walked down half the frontstretch to Hmiel, still seated inside his car. Jarrett leaned inside the window to deliver his message, and as he turned away Hmiel saluted him.
"The reason there was a red flag and the reason I went to Shane's car was to ask him where he thought he was going," said Jarrett, who is competing in Sunday's Nextel Cup Advance Auto Parts 500 here. "I just didn't understand his impatience at that time, and I think that's something all of us have to learn.
"I didn't go to create a fight and I certainly didn't go to create a situation that would actually be harmful to Shane. I hate it that he's lost points and I hate that he got the fine. ... I've heard him say that I threatened him. I didn't threaten him. My comments were to him that 'it would cost him' and, obviously, it has cost him."
Where The Hot Dogs are Greasy and the Buffalo Roam
By Monte Dutton
Gaston Gazette,April 9
North Wilkesboro is gone, and I hate it. Every time I hear the word “Rockingham,” it evokes sadness in my soul. California on Labor Day weekend is like sunbathing in Antarctica to my jaded point of view.
But do away with the Jesse Jones hot dogs at Martinsville Speedway? That’s of the devil.
"Watch out for the Redhead," her husband will say, because 35 years of marriage to her has taught him well.
An authentic Jesse Jones hotdog, don't be fooled by cheap imitations
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Eating Martinsville’s sloppy, greasy, chemical-laden hot dogs “all the way” might kill you. What’ll kill you quicker is the stress that comes from doing without them.
It occurred to me, as I was driving up here, that the track’s new owner, International Speedway Corporation, might just infiltrate the track with the communistic franks of Americrown, a food-service concern that may have been foreseen by George Orwell.
I didn’t consider it a serious threat, though. The traditional Martinsville hot dog, laden with that otherworldly pink dye, dripping grease and slaw juice through the paper wrapper, is at least as crucial to the success of NASCAR as the Checkers/Rally’s Double Drive-Thru Challenge Award. Make it two dogs “all the way” and I’d even toss in the Commit Lozenges Commit to Win Award to boot.
The fact that NASCAR has competing pit-crew competitions apparently isn’t a major bone of contention, but when lunch time arrived in the Martinsville infield Friday and there wasn’t a pyramid of greasy Jesse Joneses stacked atop a lunchroom platter, the hubbub very nearly drowned out a press conference.
A voice droned over the public-address system: “Please hold the noise down. People are working on deadline.”
Whereupon people working on deadline whirled around to scream, “Mind your own business, and if you don’t want to call in riot police, you’d better get some authentic, genuine Martinsville (expletive deleted) hot dogs in here!”
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