Food City 500 - Ken Schrader Notes

Ken Schrader Notes, Quotes: Food City 500
‘Doesn’t get much better than this’

Ken Schrader and the #49 Schwan’s Home Service Dodge head to the .533-mile Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway way this week for Sunday’s Food City 500.

Driver of the Schwan’s Home Service Dodge, 48-year-old Schrader, is a native of Fenton, Mo., and the busiest driver in major league motorsports, Schrader has raced on virtually every type of speedway in virtually every type of race car, and continues a winning career that has seen him win nearly $23 million.

The team is owned by Beth Ann and Tony Morgenthau, investors from Coral Gables, Fla. Ms. Morgenthau, whose initials make up the name of the team – BAM Racing – is the only female car owner in motorsports to become involved without prior family connections. General manager Eddie Jones is a veteran of the NASCAR Winston Cup wars, enjoying a championship career as a crew chief, mechanic and team leader. Crew chief Scott Eggleston is one of the few active crew chiefs in the business to have won a Daytona 500. Business manager Gus Larkin is a successful veteran motorsports marketer, and leads the corporate sponsorship activities.

The Schwan Food Company is a privately held manufacturer and marketer of fine frozen foods through its nationwide Schwan’s Home Service home-delivery service, its Schwan’s Consumer Brands North America retail grocery business, and its Schwan’s Food Service Group foodservice unit. Headquartered in Marshall, Minn., Schwan’s production and distribution activities in the United States and Europe employ 24,000 people. Among its well-known brands are Schwan’s®, Tony’s®, Red Baron®, Freschetta®, Pagoda®, Mrs. Smith’s®, and Edwards®.

The thoughts of Schwan’s Home Service Dodge driver Ken Schrader heading into Bristol:

“To a fan it doesn’t get much better than a race a Bristol. Anytime you have 43 cars flying around a little half-mile of concrete as fast as we do there, it doesn’t take long to run out of room. That means you’re going to have extremely close racing and that makes it exciting for the fans.

“Now, as a driver it doesn’t take long before all of that can get down right frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, we like coming to Bristol and we’ve always manage to run well at Bristol. But at Bristol it’s pretty simple; just follow the car in front of you until you’re able to get a nose underneath him, then you can pass him. There’s really no other way to pass at Bristol and that can cause people to become impatient, and we all know what that can lead to.

“Bristol used to be multi-grooved back when it was pavement we were racing on. There were two or three grooves you could run and race side-by-side. The track used to be a lot more ‘racer friendly,’ but ever since they put concrete down a second groove has never come in and so we just play follow the leader for a quick 500 laps… but, it makes for a great show.

“Bristol seems to get everyone’s juices flowing around the shop because we know we can run well there and we have proven we can run well there. We qualified third for this race last season and ran almost the entire race in the top 10 before we lost a tire and ended our day with about 100 laps to go. Second verse; same as the first: in the fall race we were running in the top five with under 100 laps, had a tire go down, made an untimely pit-stop but managed to salvage a 12th-place finish.

“We know we are capable of running up front at Bristol and last year this team did everything we could do to bring home top-10 finishes. We’re really proud of our short-track program here with this Schwan’s Home Service group and how it has continued to progress. We’ve just had more than our share of bad luck at this place, but the promise of a strong run will have this Schwan’s Home Service Dodge team revved up for this weekend.”