Virginia 500 - Ward Burton Notes

"We're moving in the right direction and I hope we can continue with that at Martinsville. We buried ourselves a small hole in the first six races and we're still trying to recover from that. We ran real well there last fall and actually had a chance to win the race. We'll be looking to do that again this weekend." - Frank Stoddard, crew chief of Caterpillar Dodge

MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY
VIRGINIA 500

BURTON ON MARTINSVILLE.
"It's always been a special place to me since it is considered to be a hometown track. Those Virginians are pretty serious about their racing. We always have some friends and family that comes to the race to cheer us on and it would be nice if we could have a good run in front of the hometown crowd.

"We had a real good run last fall at Martinsville and had a solid chance to get a win. We need to have another race like that this weekend. It has been an up and down track for us. We've had some good runs there and then last spring we had a terrible car and couldn't get out of our own way and then we went back in the fall and had a great qualifying effort and followed it up with a top-five finish. We need to have another solid day in the #22 Caterpillar Dodge."

STODDARD ON TALLADEGA.
"We made a lot of gains since we ran in Daytona. We took our backup car from the [Daytona] 500 and made some changes to help it in the draft. Those changes really paid of for us and we had a car that ran well all day and had a chance to win the race. We got shuffled out right there at the end and then Ward had to lift when he was thrown a block and lost some of his momentum. From there, our chances of winning were over. But, we were very happy with the gains we made in our plate program from Daytona. Now we have something to take back to Daytona in July."

CAT TEAM NOTES.
· The Caterpillar team returns to Martinsville Speedway with the same car that they ran last fall and finished fifth with.

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