Diamond Hill Plywood Co. 200 - Mike Wallace Notes

MIKE WALLACE / GEICO RACING PRE-RACE NOTES – DARLINGTON

EVENT INFORMATION - Event: NASCAR Busch Series Diamond Hill Plywood Co. 200 (NASCAR Busch Series race No. 4 of 34); Time and Date: 1:00 p.m. ET, Saturday, March 20; Site: Darlington Raceway; Live Coverage: FX (television) at 12:30 p.m. and MRN (radio) at 12:45 p.m. ET; Qualifying: Broadcast live on the SPEED Channel at 1:30 p.m. ET on Friday, March 19th.

LAST RACE (Sam’s Town 300): Mike Wallace and the GEICO Racing team rolled into the “Diamond in the Desert” with high hopes and even higher expectations when their No. 4 GEICO Ford hit the 1.5-mile speedway in “Sin City” but their goals were trampled when an inopportune caution and a controversial call forced the St. Louis native to settle for 20th. When the green flag dropped, Wallace quickly bolted through the field from his 25th starting spot. Running among the top-15 seven laps in, it was clear that Wallace had a fast Ford. After running near the top-ten for 94 laps, Wallace brought the GEICO Ford down pit road for a green flag stop. As Wallace was exiting pit road, the caution flag flew for oil on the track. “I’m a little confused by what happened,” said Wallace following the call by NASCAR officials to place his No. 4 Ford two laps down in 31st position. Frustrated by their decision, Wallace got up on the wheel and proved that he had a fast Ford, quickly working his way back into the top twenty as the laps clicked off. “We are very happy with our performance,” said Wallace following the race. “Our Taurus was very fast but we didn’t get the finish to show for it.”

WALLACE ON DARLINGTON RACEWAY: “Darlington has always been a historical race track. They nicknamed it the “The Lady in Black” because you have to race the race track all day long. You really can’t race your competitors until the last few laps of the race because the track wears tires out so bad. It’s a very narrow grooved race track and now it’s going to be even narrower since they’ve added the new SAFER barriers.”

WALLACE ON THE NEW SAFER BARRIERS: “Darlington was a very narrow grooved race track before they put the barriers up and now they’ve taken 26 inches of the racing groove away from us, so we don’t know what to expect. I don’t know that anyone has tested there recently, so it’s going to be a challenge for all of us, I believe. You may see quite a few cars with a new style Darlington stripe.”

HOW WILL THE BARRIERS AFFECT YOUR LINE?: “Well you know that’s a big concern right now because most the time you ran within a foot of the wall. In the middle of turns one and two, you’d run right up against the wall. Right in the middle of turn two you’d be down off of it. I haven’t been informed yet of where the SAFER barrier actually ends as it comes off the corner but its going to narrow things up for us. It was very tight; you would hardly ever run two-wide at Darlington unless you were going for the win. You would never run into the corner two-wide. I presume this just amplifies that even more.”

WALLACE ON THE CAR FOR DARLINGTON: “The car we’re taking is the one we had at Rockingham. I feel that Darlington is a race track where down force is not a total issue. You’ve got to handle and maintain tire wear. We’ve learned a few things since we ran it at Rockingham suspension-wise and hopefully we’ll be very competitive. I have a tremendous amount of confidence. We’ll go there with the attitude that we can win the race but if we can get out of there with a top-ten finish then we’ll be in good shape. If we can have the same level performance that we had in Las Vegas, then we’ll have a good weekend.”

BIAGI BROS. RACING 2004 SEASON SUMMARY: 3 starts; winnings, $85,675.

MIKE WALLACE’S NASCAR BUSCH SERIES CAREER SUMMARY: 194 Starts; 3 wins; 16 top-5 finishes; 43 top-10 finishes.

Fast Facts

What: Diamond Hill Plywood Co. 200 (Race No. 4 of 34 in the NASCAR Busch Series).

Where: Darlington Raceway, Darlington, SC.

When: 1 p.m. ET, Saturday, March 20, 2004.

Track layout: 1.366-mile banked, paved oval.

Race length: 147 laps/200 miles.

Posted awards: $952,846.

TV: FX, 12:30 p.m. ET.

Radio: MRN, XM Satellite.

2003 winner: Todd Bodine.

Top 10 in points: 1. Kevin Harvick, 520. 2. Michael Waltrip, 436. 3. Bobby Hamilton Jr., 426. 4. Johnny Sauter, 425. 5. David Green, 424. 6. Jason Keller, 407. 7. Robby Gordon, 397. 8. Martin Truex Jr., 390. 9. Tim Fedewa, 375. 10. David Stremme, 370.

Pre-race schedule (all times local): Friday - Practice, 9 -11:15 a.m., Qualifying, 1:30 p.m.; Final Practice following conclusion of NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series qualifying.