CAT RACING EVENT PREVIEW
POCONO RACEWAY
POCONO 500
Track: Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania. (2.5-mile tri-oval)
Race: Pocono 500 Date: 06.11.06
POCONO RACEWAY NEWS AND NOTES
Pocono’s Car…The No. 22 Caterpillar car Dave Blaney is scheduled to drive this weekend in the Pocono 500 at Pocono Raceway is chassis No. 83. This is the team’s workhorse and has been utilized on several occasions throughout the season. It was last used at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.
Neighborhood Excellence 400 Recap…Blaney battled a tight-handling racecar throughout the event and took the checkered flag in 30th place.
Blaney’s Busy Week…Blaney and the Caterpillar team spent two days testing this week before heading to Pocono. On Monday, the team tested at Virginia International Raceway in preparation for the upcoming road course events. Their Tuesday was spent at Kentucky Speedway shaking down the car to be driven at Michigan International Speedway later this month.
Coming Full Circle…Blaney’s 30th-place finish in Dover adds to his streak of races without a DNF. Blaney has been running at the end of 31 consecutive races, the longest current streak in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series. The streak began in this race last season. He also remains in second in laps completed this season (4,420 out of 4,450).
Blaney’s Career Stats…Blaney will make his 213th career NEXTEL Cup Series start when the green flag waves Sunday afternoon. He made his first career NASCAR Cup Series start in October 1992 at [Rockingham] North Carolina Speedway. He finished 30th after qualifying 35th in his first start at Pocono. Like this weekend, Blaney was aboard a Bill Davis Racing-owned machine.
Long Pond Lowdown…Blaney has made 12 Cup Series starts on the 2.5-mile Long Pond, Pa., facility, starting as high as 15th and finishing as high as ninth. He has scored two top-10 finishes at the track.
BDR at Pocono…Competitors driving Bill Davis Racing-owned cars have been racing at Pocono Raceway since 1993 and have made 34 starts. Those drivers have posted one top-10 effort, one pole (1998) and combined for a total of 105 laps led.
Don’t Forget…Blaney is scheduled to sign autographs at the Caterpillar merchandise trailer beginning at noon Saturday afternoon. Check with the merchandise trailer for updates and more information.
Pocono Broadcasts…Qualifying for the NASCAR Nextel Cup Pocono 500 is scheduled to start at 3:40 p.m. ET Friday, June 9. The 200-lap (500 miles) event is scheduled to start at 2:10 p.m. ET Sunday, June 11, and will broadcast LIVE on FOX (TV), MRN and XM Satellite Radio Channel 144.
Dave Blaney on Pocono…
“This is a busy week for the team. We’ve decided to spend a couple of days testing, which is something I think we really needed to do. There have been a couple of times lately when we wanted to try something different at the track, but most of the time practice just isn’t long enough to spend a lot of time trying something different and hoping it works, because then if it doesn’t, you have haven’t had the chance to practice what you think you know and tweak on it. So I think having the chance to test at Kentucky with our Michigan car will be a good thing for us, and then of course we wanted to go ahead and shake down the road course car too. It just turned out that we ended up doing all this stuff at the same time.
“Pocono is an interesting track, and I’ve done OK there in the past, so hopefully we can get there and be a bit better off the truck than we have been the last couple of races. If you get behind at a place like Pocono, it’s going to be a very long weekend. The straightaways are so long, and you need to make sure that your car is good off the corner or that will hurt your straightaway speed. Of course, all the corners are different, so you have to decide which one is most important to you and set the car up to be great in that corner and as good as possible in the others. It’s a tricky track and can be a lot of fun if things are going well. That’s true for every track, but boy, can things be miserable if you struggle at a place like Pocono. Hopefully that’s not going to happen this week though, we’re overdue for a good weekend.”
