Emerson Radio 250 - Derrike Cope Notes

DERRIKE COPE NOTES, QUOTES: Funai 250
‘Fast track – speed and time’

Derrike Cope and the #49 Advil Ford team head to the fast .750-mile Richmond (Va.) International Raceway this week for Friday night’s Funai 250 NASCAR Busch Series race. Cope, a 45-year-old winning veteran of NASCAR racing, will be among that group of drivers running both the NASCAR Busch Series and NASCAR Nextel Cup Series event at California this weekend.

Cope, a native of Spanaway, Wash., is a former winner of the Daytona 500 and a two-time NASCAR Nextel Cup race winner. A top athlete whose professional baseball career was cut short by a knee injury in college, Cope has become one of the top athletes in NASCAR racing, and has become one of the top public spokesmen for the sport.

Jay Robinson Racing, in its fourth season of operation, is one of the fastest-growing teams in NASCAR. Robinson, a Charlotte, N.C., native who is a successful businessman, founded the team as a high-value endeavor that offers high-end equipment and efforts, while proving to be one of the most cost-efficient teams in the sport. Robinson fields two sponsored cars fulltime on the Busch Series: Cope’s #49 Advil Ford and the #39 Yahoo! Ford, which Cope is helping mentor.

The thoughts of #49 Advil Ford driver Derrike Cope heading into Richmond:

“Two things you have to keep in mind in the Busch race at Richmond. First, it is a really fast track and you get around the place quickly. Secondly, it’s not a long race. Two-hundred fifty laps doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to get the things done you need to get done – so you had better go into the race knowing what you need.

“Everything about Richmond is quick. You get through the turns quickly. You get down the straightaways quickly. You can get into trouble quickly. Everything is over quickly.

“First of all, that makes qualifying pretty important. Typically, qualifying at Richmond – whether it is for the Busch race or the Cup race – is really close. A few tenths can separate the pole winner from the guy going home. When the blink of an eye can determine your fate like that, you know it’s some pretty serious stuff.

“Qualifying gives you the initial track position. You can pass at Richmond but, since the race is just 250 laps, it becomes a ‘track position’ track. The closer you can start towards the front on Friday night, most likely the better your night is going to be all of the way around. You don’t see too much ‘last-to-first’ type of stuff in the Busch race at Richmond. There just isn’t the time to get it done, and the cars are too close together in speeds anyway.

“You make your own luck at Richmond, plain and simple. And that starts with that qualifying session. A good qualifying run gives you a better starting spot, puts more cars behind you and fewer cars in front of you, gives you a better pit position . . . it’s just a better deal off the way around. Some tracks you can kind of blow off qualifying, take what you get and concentrate on the race. At Richmond, everybody pays a lot of attention to qualifying because so much is riding on it. Let’s face it – qualifying doesn’t win the race for you but it can sure lose it for you.

“The track itself is really racey. It’s pretty smooth with good turns. The second turn can be a little tricky with that hard left-hand turn but if you enter Turn One pretty well, the second corner shouldn’t be that big of a problem.

“Most of the problems tend to come with people being over-anxious in the race. And it’s a tough track, and a tough race, to be patient. You know you don’t have much time to move up and if the guy ahead of you is slow but holding the groove, it’s easy to lose your patience and nudge him up out of the groove. The deal is, if you are nudging him up and maybe the guy behind you decides to nudge you up at the same time, you can call get nudged into a wad of sheet metal. So you have to really be aware of who you are racing, in front of behind, all of the time.

“It’s usually a pretty good race at Richmond, the Busch race and the Cup race. If we can lay down a pretty decent qualifying lap, it might end up being a pretty good night for this Advil Ford team.”