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Cheez-It 250 - Hank Parker Jr. Notes Hank Parker Jr. / GNC Live Well Racing Pre-Race Notes EVENT INFORMATION - Event: NASCAR Busch Series Cheez-It 250; Time and Date: 1 p.m. EST, Saturday, March 24; Site: Bristol Motor Speedway, Bristol, Tenn. Live Coverage: FX Network (television) and PRN (radio); Qualifying: 2 p.m. EST, Friday, March 23; Happy Hour: Friday, March 23, at approximately 4:30 p.m. EST. LAST RACE (SunCom 200) - Hank Parker Jr. and the GNC Live Well Racing Team scored their best starting spot of 2001 by qualifying 16th for last Saturday's SunCom 200 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. Parker battled a tight-handling condition all day. Air pressure and track bar adjustments were made during each pit stop, but the condition worsened as the race progressed. Parker finished the race 25th, two-laps down from race winner Jeff Green. STANDINGS - Parker now sits 19th in the Busch Series Drivers' Points Standings, while team owner Scott Welliver also holds the 19th spot in the Owners' Points Standings. 2000 CHEEZ-IT 250 RECAP - Hank Parker Jr. and his family-owned No. 53 team scored the third top-10 of their 2000 season with an eighth-place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway last March. CAR OF CHOICE - Parker will drive the same car at Bristol this weekend that he piloted at both Rockingham and Darlington this season. The car's nickname is "Patches." According to car chief Bryan Smith, the name is based on the number of times the car has been "patched up." The chassis of the car is about 4 years old and has been driven by both Mike McLaughlin and Tim Fedewa. SIBLING RIVALRY - Hank Parker Jr. isn't the only member of the Cicci-Welliver Racing organization to have a brother that works for a rival team. Ronnie Denton, the engineer for all three Cicci-Welliver teams, is the brother of Kelly Denton, who drives the No. 77 in the NASCAR Busch Series. Hank's brother Billy, a.k.a. "Catfish," is a mechanic on the No. 10 ppc Racing entry of Jeff Green. DRIVER AND ... AUTHOR? - Hank Parker Jr. is taking a stab at journalism by penning a journal once every two weeks for NASCAR's Official Website, www.nascar.com. Parker was approached by representatives of the site earlier this season, asking if he'd be interested in letting race fans get an inside peek at the day to day life of the 26 year-old Busch driver. "It's really fun for me, because it's something really different," Parker said of his new column. "I read some of Dale (Earnhardt) Jr.'s columns last year, and it really got me interested in trying my hand at writing. I never realized how difficult it is to put what you're thinking down on paper. I'm getting better at it, but sometimes it's really challenging to get my point across exactly. I let my PR guy read it before I send it to NASCAR just to clean it up and make sure I haven't missed any misspelled words. But otherwise, it's all me. I'm really enjoying it, so thanks to NASCAR for giving me the opportunity to let people see another side of my personality." HANK PARKER JR. ON BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY - "This is a fun track to race at, even though I haven't had a whole lot of success here. This is one of those places where you don't ask if a big wreck will happen, but when the big wreck will happen. You just try to be in the right place at the right time and get through it as best you can. We finally seemed to get a handle on it last year. We finished eighth here and I was thrilled with that. If you survive at Bristol, it's a good day. "The key to getting around Bristol is to be able to get your car down on the white line in the turns. Handling is key here, and if you don't have a good handling car, you're in for a long day. If you don't wreck, that is." ON THE LAYOUT OF BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY - "At some other tracks, you can kind of look ahead and get a sense of what's waiting for you in the turns, you really don't get to do that here. The track is so steep that, when you're down in the middle of a turn, it's really difficult to see what's coming up ahead of you. It makes you rely that much more on your spotter. He really is your lifeline at a track like this. "You really only look out a small part of your windshield at Bristol. You're constantly looking out the upper left hand side of your car, which really cuts down on what you can see. But worse than not knowing what's coming up ahead of you is not knowing what's coming up behind you. You can sometimes avoid a wreck that's in front of you, but there's not much that can be done about a guy slamming into your car from behind." ON THE CONCENTRATION LEVEL REQUIRED AT BRISTOL - "You never get away from traffic at Bristol, so it really is a mentally draining race as well as a physically draining race. You constantly have somebody around you, which is different from some of the flatter, wider tracks like Vegas or Homestead. I mean, you never relax in a race car, but at tracks like Vegas where the field gets kind of spread out, you get a little breathing room from time to time. That doesn't happen here, ever." CREW CHIEF BILLY NACEWICZ ON BRISTOL - "Even the winner comes out of Bristol with his car all banged up. It's a body man's nightmare, but it's probably the most exciting racing of the year. You worry about which car to take, because it almost becomes a sacrificial lamb. You better not plan on using the car you take to Bristol for at least two or three weeks afterwards, because it will probably take that long to get it fixed. "We're taking 'Patches' to Bristol, the same car we've already raced a couple of times this year. We're trying to reduce the number of variables we're dealing with in practice by having a constant with the car we use. We had another car ready to go, called 'Slider,' in case 'Patches' got damaged at Darlington, but we weren't really happy with the chassis on that one. Hank did a great job of staying out of trouble at Darlington, so we're getting to bring the car we wanted to this race."
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