Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 - Ken Schrader Notes

Ken Schrader Notes, Quotes: Carolina Dodge Dealers 400

‘Track with personality, sometimes too much personality’

Ken Schrader and the #49 Schwan’s Home Service Dodge head to the 1.366-mile Darlington (S.C.) Raceway way this week for Sunday’s Carolina Dodge Dealers 400.

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 Darlington:

“You have to get excited about going to Darlington. The tradition, of course, but Darlington is a racer’s racetrack. There isn’t another track on the circuit that challenges drivers the way that Darlington does. On top of that, if you do make the slightest mistake the wall has a way of jumping out and slapping you.

“But, you have to love Darlington. It eats up tires as well as any so, that means we’ll be skating around the track not too long into a run. You won’t be sliding as much as in early September when the weather’s extremely hot and the track seems like somebody’s dumped a couple of 55 gallon drums of oil in the turns… but, there will be times it seems that way on Sunday. If you can get your car to be ‘comfortably free’ you’ll normally have a pretty good day… that is if you don’t make that certain mistake which gets the right side of your car pancaked.

“We’ve had a fair amount of success at Darlington. We’ve sat on the pole several times and had several top-five finishes. We had a pretty good weekend in this race last year. We qualified 15th and ran in the top 20 all day before ending up finishing 17th. If we can repeat that performance from last season, maybe improve on it a little, but most importantly have a solid weekend; it would be a great confidence builder going into Bristol.

“Yeah, Darlington is a ‘NASCAR Tradition’ and personally we’re happy to have a chance to continue to run there twice this season. We need more of these tracks that are definitely unique with a little personality. Of course, those times it does reach out and slap you, might say it has a little too much personality.

“It sounds repetitive, but I just can’t say enough about the job this Schwan’s Home Service Dodge team is doing. They’re putting in some serious hours in the shop getting these cars ready to go racing, and it’s showing.

“Darlington presents a great challenge for a race team and we’re looking forward to taking on the ‘Track Too Tough To Tame’ or the ‘Lady In Black’ or whatever you want to call it We know the Schwan’s Home Service Dodge can run fast there, it’s just a matter of going out there and proving we can do it again.”