Chevy Rock & Roll 400 - Ricky Craven Notes

Chevy Rock & Roll 400 Preview - Ricky Craven, No. 32 Tide Pontiac

Best Season Finish:
1st at Darlington Raceway
Best Season Start: 6th at North Carolina Speedway

Best Career Finish: 1st (Darlington 3-16-03; Martinsville, 10-15-01)
Career Pole Positions: 6 (Martinsville 1996, New Hampshire 1996 & 1998, Michigan, 2001, Rockingham, 2002, Darlington, 2002)
Current Points Standing: 20th

Southern 500 Recap:

Ricky Craven drove his Tide Pontiac to an eighth-place finish at Darlington Raceway. Craven and his PPI Motorsports (PPIM) team have seven top-10 finishes in 2003, two more than they scored during the entire 2002 season. Craven's eighth-place starting position was the second-best qualifying effort of the year for PPIM, just behind its sixth-place starting spot at Rockingham in February.

The Chassis:

The chassis Ricky Craven will drive at Richmond International Raceway is chassis No. 39 which he drove to a 10th-place finish in the June 8 Pocono 500. Chassis No. 39 was last used in the July 27 event at Pocono Raceway, where a blown engine gave the Tide team a 40th-place finish. The chassis was built in-house at PPI Motorsports in 2002.

Testing:

Ricky Craven and the PPI Motorsports (PPIM) team spent Wed., Sept. 3, testing at The Milwaukee Mile track in Wisconsin. The team tested with chassis No. 49, the same car it plans to use in the Sept. 14 NASCAR Winston Cup event at New Hampshire International Speedway. PPIM used the last of its five "official" tests at Indianapolis Motor Speedway earlier this year, so the team is now testing at tracks that do not host Winston Cup events.

Special Guests:

If an award were given out to the couple that traveled the farthest to attend this weekend's NASCAR Winston Cup (NWC) event at Richmond International Raceway, Joyce and Bob Gilliam would definitely be in the running. The couple, who are both over 60 years old, are flying in from Anchorage, Alaska, to attend their first NWC race. The Gilliam's are the Grand Prize winners in Super 8 Motels' Race Weekend Getaway Sweepstakes. The couple will serve as Honorary Pit Crew members on Ricky Craven's No. 32 Tide Pontiac pit crew on Saturday night, and will meet Craven prior to the event. Super 8 Motels, Inc. is an associate sponsor of the No. 32 PPI Motorsports team.

Temporary Setback:

PPI Motorsports driver Ricky Craven received some unsettling news just prior to last Sunday's Southern 500 event at Darlington Raceway. Early that morning, Craven's business in his home state of Maine, Ricky Craven Motorsports North, was gutted by fire. The store, operated by Craven's sister, Laurie Matheson, sells all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles and racing-related merchandise. Craven flew to Maine on Monday to survey the damage and visit his family before heading to Wisconsin on Tuesday evening for a scheduled test session with his No. 32 Tide Pontiac team. Craven says he will rebuild the business as quickly as possible.

Ricky Craven - "First, I want to thank everyone for keeping us in their thoughts these past few days. I traveled to Maine on Monday to evaluate the damage and spend time with my family. My first concern was to make sure the employees of Ricky Craven Motorsports North were safe. Our focus now is to make sure our customers are taken care of as we rebuild over the next several months. In spite of this setback, my top priority is to perform to the best of my ability in the Tide Pontiac. I always go back to something my wife, Kay, once told me. 'Tough times don't last. Tough people do.' We'll move forward and rebuild, you can count on that."

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