Coca-Cola 600 - LOWE'S MOTOR SPEEDWAY

NAPA RACING PRESS BOX FEATURING MICHAEL WALTRIP

Why do drivers like Lowe’s Motor Speedway?
“All the drivers, including myself, love to go to Lowe’s Motor Speedway to race. It’s not only in our backyard, but mainly because it is a great track. It’s a fun track to drive. You can race from the bottom to the top. I can’t wait to see how the 600 plays out. There are some definite and different grooves you will see working in throughout the race.”

How important is it to be out front and in clean air at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, especially after watching what happened in the All-Star Race?
“It’s amazing. You take a car running in 10th place. It will turn laps at 30 (seconds) flat. If he gets track position and can run upfront, his times will change to a 29-second lap. I am not exaggerating. Track position makes that big of a difference. That’s why these new cars are tough to figure out because they work differently when you are behind somebody than when you are out in clean air. We saw guys literally take a pound of air pressure or even a half pound of air pressure out, or make a small track-bar change, and they go all to pieces. The 99 car was a perfect example. He looked like a rocket ship and then they worked on it. It was terrible. The same thing happened to the 88 car.

“In the Showdown race, I was going to run fifth or sixth place. I was running with my teammate David Reutimann. Doing that really didn’t get you anything. That gets you right up on the truck. I told the guys to work on the car. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t said that. We took a car that was competitive and I could run with them, to a car that was out of control and crashing. These new cars can be very hard to figure out and adjust. Obviously when you get it right, it is a lot of fun.”

There were no accidents during the All-Star Race. Do you anticipate another good chance of having a caution-free race?
“We didn’t see any crashes in the All-Star Race, but we are going to have more time to see them on Sunday night. Don’t think you are going to see the same race that you saw Saturday night on Sunday. When you have 25 laps and then you get to work on it, you just don’t get that big in a hurry. The 600 will have a totally different mentality. When you are out there scrambling for 600 miles trying to stay on the lead lap, or trying to stay in the lead, the intensity level is up even higher than the All-Star Race.

“I ran second in the 2005 Coca-Cola 600 and on every stop, the team adjusted on it. I would tell them the NAPA car was perfect. My team would say O.K. Then I would look back in my mirror and they were adjusting my jack bolt. But that’s what a good crew chief and team will do. They will anticipate where that track is going.”

What did the NAPA team learn by running in the Sprint Showdown?
“We have seen a trend here at Michael Waltrip Racing and that is on the flat, short tracks, we are good. We are really competitive. On a track like Darlington, we were pretty competitive. I felt pleased with where we were. However on the mile-and-a-half-banked tracks, we haven’t been there. Whether it was Texas, California, Vegas or Atlanta, we just have not been doing the job. We have to make our cars better. Any time you have track time; you can work on your set-up and develop your set-up. We feel like we are getting smarter. It was really encouraging to see Reutimann up there running competitively late in the Showdown. He was up there running with Kasey Kahne and we saw what happened to him. We’ll take Ryan Pemberton’s set-up for Reutimann at the end of the race and put it in all three of our cars at the start of practice on Thursday. It will give us a good place to start. We know that set-up is competitive and we can start there. It will give us a good place to judge where we are and how we need to progress.”

Did Toyota offer Michael Waltrip Racing one of the engines that were peaked out and run in the cars of Joe Gibbs Racing?
“I’m not really sure. I liked what I had in my NAPA car. I had good power. I think I read that the Gibbs teams built those engines themselves. I think they were just trying to learn what the limits of the engines were. Obviously, they learned something since they lost three engines. They know now. It reminds me of my own set-up on Saturday night. I ended up not liking it. We learned what we did and we can science it out. We became smarter. I think Toyota said for them to go for it and they learned that they couldn’t make it to the finish.”

Kasey Kahne won the race by not taking any tires. Some teams took two, others took four. Were you surprised to see that during the race? And do you think we’ll see that on Sunday?
“It surprised me a little bit that Kasey was able to do that. Circumstances match up sometimes. I think Biffle would have won, but when Biffle took on two tires, his car got too tight. You never know what the result of changing tires is going to be. Kasey had to drive his butt off. He is always fast at Charlotte. A couple of years ago, he had the race all but locked up and then blew a tire. He gets around that track really well. He took his car and put it in the best position and was out front. He was able to hold on and win it.”

Waltrip on Trackside! Michael will be a guest on this week’s “Trackside” program airing Friday at 7 p.m. on SPEED. The show will be broadcasting live from the Coca-Cola stage at Speed Street in uptown Charlotte. 

Michael Waltrip Fast Facts

• NAPA AUTO PARTS driver Michael Waltrip will be competing in his 701st NASCAR Sprint Cup race when the 12th event of the 2008 Sprint Cup season, the Coca-Cola 600, gets underway at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C.

• Waltrip made his NASCAR Cup debut at Charlotte during the 1985 Coca-Cola World 600. He started 24th and finished 29th behind the wheel of the No. 23 machine owned by Dick Bahre. His brother Darrell was the race winner.

• Waltrip will start in his 46th Cup race at the 1.5-mile track. His best start is 2nd (October 9, 1994) and best finish is 2nd while driving the NAPA machine on May 30, 2004. In total, he has four top-five and 12 top-10 finishes. Waltrip has completed 14,639 of 16,296 laps (89.8%) at the track and has led a total of 71 laps in competition.

• During his 33-race Busch career at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Waltrip has earned 2 victories (March 29, 1993 and Oct. 9, 1999), 2 pole positions, 12 top-5 and 13 top-10 finishes. He has led 189 laps in competition.

• Entering this week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event, Waltrip is 32nd in driver and 33rd in owner points standings. He is guaranteed a starting spot in Sunday’s race. A total of 48 cars are on the entry list.

NAPA AUTO PARTS driver Michael Waltrip Lowe’s Motor Speedway Statistics

 2008 NAPA AUTO PARTS PIT CREW
     Front Tire Changer:  Shannon Myers
     Front Tire Carrier: Chris Hall
     Jackman: Scott King
     Rear Tire Carrier: Dwayne Moore
     Rear Tire Changer: Andy Thurman
     Gas Man: Art Harris
     Catch Can:  Shawn Soules

EVENT FACTS
Coca-Cola 600
Event: 12 of 36

Track:Lowe’s Motor Speedway

Length: 1.5-Mile Tri-Oval

Distance: 400 laps/600 miles

Date: Sunday, May 25

Time: 5 p.m.  ET
TV:FOX
Radio: PRN

2007 Winner: Casey Mears
2007 Pole: Ryan Newman

Television Tidbits
Practice
Thurs., May 22 at 3 p.m. ET
SPEED

Fri., May 24 at 2:45 p.m. and
6 p.m. ET
SPEED

Sprint Cup Qualifying
Thurs., May 22 at 5:10 p.m. ET
SPEED

This Week in NASCAR
Mon., May 26 at 8 p.m. ET
SPEED