MBNA America 400 - Ken Schrader Notes

Ken Schrader Notes, Quotes: Delaware 400
‘Demanding track… perfect fit’

Ken Schrader and the #49 Schwan’s Home Service Dodge team head to the one-mile Dover (Del.) International Speedway for Sunday’s Dover 400 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race.

Driver of the #49 Schwan’s Home Service Dodge, Schrader is a native of Fenton, Mo. 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 with BAM Racing, which fields the Schwan’s Home Service team.

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 Nextel Cup wars, enjoying a championship career as a crew chief, mechanic and team leader. 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 Dover:

“We always look forward to going to Dover, mainly because we’ve had some success there in the past. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of the concrete surface, never have been, but at least at Dover they ground the concrete racing surface. The track now actually gets pretty good over the course of a race weekend. Dover is multi-grooved and plenty wide, you know, plenty of room to race. That’s usually a rarity for concrete tracks. Many of them remain one groove no matter how many cars or rubber they get on the track.

“Another good thing about the Dover weekend, with all the different series running, by the time we take to the track, there’s already been a lot of rubber put down They’ll run the Busch North cars there on Friday, then the Busch Series on Saturday, so by the time we get there it’s good two or even three-groove racetrack. But, Dover is unique in that regard, most concrete racing surfaces won’t provide the wide racing grooves that Dover will.

“We, along with a lot of other teams, had a miserable weekend there in the spring. We broke a trackbar early on the race. It’s an extremely unusual thing to have happen, but it’s been that kind of year. Of course, the spring race also had the first ‘big one’ on a one mile racetrack that we’ve seen in a long time. That was unusual as well. You might expect that at a two-mile plus oval and of course, Talladega, but you don’t see a one-mile track produced a 20 car pileup too often. Maybe that’s why they call it the ‘Monster Mile.’

“Dover is an unforgiving type of racetrack. You carry a ton of speed through the corner then you literally come up out of a hole… kind of a blind exit. If something happens right at the exit of the turns, you won’t have much time to react. If you get turned around in the corner, you won’t have time to save it and avoid that hard lick into the outside wall. It’s a demanding track and in my opinion, a perfect fit to the final 10-race deal.

“The Schwan’s Home Service team has had some hard luck there in recent years. I say that because there in the spring when we had a decent run going, or we had a good car anyway, but our trackbar broke. We had a good run going there last year but were involved in an altercation and got messed up pretty good… so, we’ll see. We’ll always have pleasant memories of Dover and really look forward to racing there. We’ve won a Busch race there and a Cup race, and always look forward to going back.”