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2001 Schedule and Results
Virginia 500 - Buckshot Jones Notes
Buckshot Jones Notes Quotes: Virginia 500
“It’s bump and run racing”
This weekend Buckshot Jones and the #44 Georgia-Pacific Dodge team head to the .526-mile Martinsville (Va.) Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Virginia 500. Jones has finished in the Top 25 in three of his last five races, highlighted by a 12th-place finish at his home track in Atlanta. Jones continues to be one of the fastest improving drivers on the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit, and looks to continue that streak this weekend.
The 31-year old Jones returns for his second season at Petty Enterprises. The young talent welcomed back Georgia-Pacific as the primary sponsor to compete in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. Jones has enjoyed much success in his racing career, including two wins in the NASCAR Busch Series before joining the ranks of Winston Cup. A native and current resident of Georgia, Jones is one of only two active Winston Cup stars to come out of the Peach State.
The thoughts of Georgia-Pacific Dodge driver Buckshot Jones heading into Martinsville:
“Martinsville is a tough little bull-ring track. It’s not really a ‘hit-and-run’ track but more of a ‘bump-and-run’ type of place. You see a lot of little spins there, but you hardly ever see cars get torn up really bad. It’s like one of those Saturday night tracks that we all grew up on. It’s hard racing, but it’s pretty fun and always really wild.
“It’s a really flat track and that makes it one of the more difficult tracks to drive. It seems like you always want to drive really hard into the turns, but you just can’t. You can’t overdrive this track, you have to be smooth and get into a rhythm. It takes a little while to get used to Martinsville. It’s not the type of place where you just get in the car and mash the gas pedal down. It’s more of a finesse track, just with lots of bumping and banging.
“It’s a really small place, and like Bristol, you are always on top of the guy next to you. You are going to bump and bang a little bit, but that’s racing. It’s part of the deal and there isn’t much you can do about it. It’s short-track racing, and that type of racing lends itself to have some bumpers and fenders get bent up a little bit. You see tempers flare, but it’s always been part of the deal and probably always will be.
“The biggest deal at Martinsville is to have four tires on the car at the end of the day. It’s a long race and you can’t win on lap 250. You have to keep your equipment in good shape for the end of the day. If that means taking it easy at the start of the race, well, it’s a whole lot better than not being around at the end of the day. There are a lot of things you need to take care of at Martinsville. The tires, the body, and the brakes all have to be good at the end of 500 laps. You just can’t drive around like it’s the end of the world. You have to be smart.
“We have really improved at Martinsville. We were knocked around a little bit last year in this race, but we came back in October and ran a lot better. We are just looking to keep on improving. We have done a really good job this year of improving at tracks that we weren’t as strong at last year. You can see that in our results. We have been competitive at just about every race we have been in. We have had some things go wrong that was either bad luck, or circumstances that were beyond our control, but overall I have been happy with our races. Martinsville is tough and we are just looking to improve. We’ve done a good job of that this year.
“Martinsville is tough there is no doubt about that. You go and put 43 drivers on a track of this size and something is going to give. There just isn’t enough real estate to go around at Martinsville. I don’t care how good of an agent you are, you’re just not going to make everyone happy. At some point you are going to have more than one guy wanting the same piece of concrete. It really does get pretty wild. I am just looking to keep this #44 Georgia-Pacific Dodge out of trouble and see if we can get another good finish this weekend.”
2001 Schedule and Results
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