Aaron's 312 - Derrike Cope Notes

Rethinking qualifying importance?
Cope, Robinson, Advil Ford Busch Series team Have passed more cars at Talladega than anyone

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The way history has been for Jay Robinson Racing, you might expect Derrike Cope to back off during pole qualifying Thursday for Saturday’s NASCAR Busch Series race at the 2.66-mile Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.

“Uh . . . I don’t think I’d go that far,” laughed Cope, driver of Robinson’s #49 Advil Ford on the Busch Series.

Still, history shows that the #49 comes through the field better than anyone in Busch Series racing at Talladega Superspeedway. In fact, no team has passed more cars at the famed speedway since Jay Robinson Racing began in 2001. No one has passed more cars at any Busch Series track anywhere over a three-race span.

The team has never finished worse than 16th at Talladega; and has a sixth-place finish to its credit in 2002. On the reverse, it has started 39th twice and 41st once.

“We’d run into little problems during qualifying each of the past three years but little problems magnify themselves at Talladega,” said Robinson, who owns Cope’s Advil Ford and the #39 Yahoo! Ford.

“But we have always been able to get the cars to race as good as anybody out there,” Robinson said. “We’ve been able to work to the front and have some really great finishes. With a break here or there, there’s no telling what we could end up doing this week.”

While the Advil Ford team has fought through some of those same-type little problems the first part of this season, both Cope and Robinson feel Talladega might be the cure.

“We ran one other restrictor plate race this season – Daytona – and we cut through the field there,” Cope pointed out. Indeed, he started 41st and finished 20th in the season-opener.

“Speed comes down to how much air you can get inside that engine and how well you mix the fuel with it. The plates obviously play a major role in that,” Cope said. “So qualifying for one lap is one thing. We will go out there Thursday, run one ‘throwaway’ lap and then put everything into one lap to determine where we start. One little bug in the ointment, and it costs you dearly.

“The race itself, well, that’s something entirely different. We have a good aerodynamic car and a solid engine,” he added. “Good work from the spotter’s stand, good work in the pits and finding the right lines and playing the draft the right way, that makes all of the difference. We’re going out Thursday to lay down as good a qualifying lap as we can, and to start as close to the front as we can.”

But, he added, “If that doesn’t work out, well, with our history, we aren’t going to worry about it. We’ll just sit back, smile and get ready for 300 miles on Saturday.”

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, he 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.