EA Sports 500 - Ricky Rudd Notes

RICKY RUDD: "Winning anywhere, to me, is important. It doesn't matter if it's a foot race, I guess, right now would be good."

Ricky Rudd won the pole the last time the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup series visited Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. With the series returning there this weekend, a victory would mean quite a bit, says the driver of the No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus. He addresses that question and others this week from his fans.

What would winning Talladega mean to you? I know as a fan I would be jumping of the couch? "I tell you, winning anywhere, to me, is important. It doesn't matter if it's foot race, I guess, right now would be good. I never won at Talladega, I ran third, I think, a couple of times, maybe second. It would be a neat deal. It's just sort of a crapshoot there. Just being in the right place, and a lot of it's luck. Plus, you got the DEI cars that tend to dominate down there. Everybody else is sort of a lot of luck involved, where you finish. I would take it anywhere; Talladega would be as good a place as any."

Is Talladega the type of track that you really need a teammate or can you do it without one? "You can do it without one. You sort of gain and lose your friends as the day goes on. The DEI situation is a little bit rare where those guys work fairly good together. They end up about every other race fighting with one another and complaining that they didn't help each other, but every other race they get it together, and they're tough to beat that way - especially when you get two cars that are so fast by themselves, they don't need to draft. They can move forward and not use the draft. That's how dominant those cars have been down there in years past, but somewhere down the line that dominance is going to end, and hopefully it'll be this time."

Now that the final 10 races are underway, have seen you seen teammates working together? "You don't really notice it on the track. I think that, like the Roush group, they got quite a few of those guys in that are in the top 10, three of 'em; I know they work together, that hasn't changed. Now they're starting to hold back a little info right now, this will be the time that if you're ever going to have that issue arise, it would be now. But, we're not part of that group anymore, so I really can't speak for them."

Is rear-wheel member camber still used? I haven't heard mention of it in years, but I do remember you discussing it after you lost an axle. "All the cars still have the camber in the back end. It's a straight axle; it's kind of unusual to have camber in 'em. That started showing up in the late '80s. The degree of camber that we're allowed to run is NASCAR dictated. And, usually, the teams will push that right up to the legal limit. I don't know what it is. I think it's a degree, a degree and a half, or something like that that they're able to run."

What is you favorite track? "I don't really have a favorite track. I enjoy the variety of tracks. I don't think I ever really had a favorite. I enjoy most of them."

What's your favorite city? "I enjoy the variety there. I enjoy going out west. We still fool a little bit with the go-karts and stuff, and there's a lot of go-kart shops out there and tracks out there, and we go out there and play around a little bit when we get the chance - we did that the last time we went to California. So, I enjoy the west, I like Phoenix, but by the same token, I like a lot of the east-coast cities. When we were racing at New Hampshire, practice ended on Saturday about noontime, so instead of sitting around the motorhome, Donald (Leach, Ricky's motorcoach driver) and I hopped in a car, Linda wasn't with us, and we just drove up to Kennebunk, Maine, up there, rode around, and saw former President Bush's house. Just kind of wandered around a little bit. It was something I had never done before, see the New England shoreline. So, I enjoy the variety of places we go."

Of all the drivers on the tour, which ones are your closest friends - who has been a close friend either in the past or present? Anybody you've been closer to? "Not really. First of all, I like when I see the camaraderie amongst the younger drivers. When I came into this sport many years ago, I was really pretty young, so I didn't have much in common with anybody. I was about 18 and the next youngest guy was 25 or 30. So, I came up in a time when you really weren't friends with your competitors, not just my age gap, but, in general, guys weren't really - even today, you know everybody and you're friendly, but if you got any free time you don't usually spending it with each other. I was married at a pretty young age; Linda traveled everywhere with me, so whenever we had free time, we would all spend it together. There's a lot of great people in this garage; all in all, they are a pretty good group of people. Again, any free time I had in the past I spent with my family."