Aaron's 312 - Mike Wallace Notes

EVENT INFORMATION - Event: NASCAR Busch Series Aaron’s 312 (NASCAR Busch Series race No. 8 of 34); Time and Date: 2 p.m. ET, Saturday, April 24; Site: Talladega Superspeedway; Live Coverage: FOX (television) at 2 p.m. and MRN (radio) at 1:45 p.m. ET; Final Practice: Tape delayed and broadcast on the SPEED Channel at 3 p.m. ET, Friday, April 23rd.

LAST RACE (Pepsi 300): Mike Wallace entered Music City for the Pepsi 300 looking to improve on his two prior starts at the 1.33-mile concrete oval, but his effort was stalled when disaster struck on lap 59 eliminating the No. 4 GEICO Ford from contention. When the green flag dropped, Wallace quickly moved from his 30th starting position into the top-25 before radioing into crew chief Tony Lambert that his Taurus was “tight in the center off”. As the laps continued to click off, Wallace battled an ill-handling car before keying the radio to tell the team, “I think I have a rear tire going down.” Lambert called Wallace in for a four tire stop. Somewhat out of sequence, the stop put Wallace two laps down but the team was optimistic of their chances to be contenders for the win as Wallace bolted through the field on fresh tires. But on lap 59, as the GEICO Ford entered turn three, Wallace’s hopes for the prestigious Gibson guitar trophy were dashed when the No. 43 of Aaron Fike lost control of his car and collected Wallace. “That was one of the hardest hits of my career,” said Wallace after emerging from the infield care center. “The 43 car just lost it,” he exclaimed.

WALLACE ON TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY: “I always look forward to the superspeedway races,” said Wallace. “I’ve won at Talladega in an ARCA car and am really excited to get back there. Other than that, it’s Talladega which is restrictor plate racing. It’s a lot of fun to me. A lot of people don’t like it, but I enjoy it a lot because it doesn’t really matter where you start in the race. You can start on the pole or qualify 35th but still be leading the race in a short period of time. I’m just excited to go there each and every time.”

WALLACE ON HIS TALLADEGA HOT ROD: “We’re taking the same car that we ran at Daytona. We had a problem there and got involved in a wreck but it wasn’t that major of a fix. We’re very, very excited about going to the superspeedway’s because our cars run really well there. The Ilmor Engineering personnel tell us that we have a little better motor than we had at Daytona so that’s an improvement. Our car at Daytona was awfully good, so we don’t seem to think that we need to change anything. We’re going there with basically the exact same package that we had at Daytona and hopefully we’ll have a better finishing result.”

WALLACE ON EXPERIENCE: “I think experience definitely helps at Talladega. With that type of racing, believe it or not, you have to have a tremendous amount of patience during the race which a lot of people don’t have at those race tracks. You can see it happening. They try to make moves on cars by themselves and don’t get them completed. Sometimes you have to slow down to go fast there, believe it or not.”

WALLACE ON THE ISSUES AT TALLADEGA: “The only issues at Talladega are horsepower and bodies. You need a very slippery, non-downforce type of car. You need the least amount of drag as possible.”

BIAGI BROS. RACING 2004 SEASON SUMMARY: 7 starts; one top-10, winnings, $165,315.

MIKE WALLACE’S NASCAR BUSCH SERIES CAREER SUMMARY: 198 Starts; 3 wins; 16 top-5 finishes; 44 top-10 finishes.