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 Friday, October 1
Rudd hopes to keep his cool in Martinsville
 
Associated Press

 Ricky Rudd's looking to repeat in Martinsville, Va. -- except this time he'll try to keep cool.

Last year he overcame cockpit temperatures of 150 degrees and burns from holes in the seat upholstery to win the NAPA AutoCare 500.

He cut the holes to try to get more cool air from the ventilation system. But when the cooling system shut down, Rudd heated up.

Ricky Rudd
Time is running out on Ricky Rudd, who extended his winning streak to 16 seasons last fall in Martinsville.

"The metal of the seat was burning through my uniform and I had burns all over my legs and back. I had blisters all over," he said. "The heat was the kind of stuff you jump away from, but I didn't have anywhere to go unless I wanted to sit on the steering wheel."

His gutsy performance brought a win that extended his string of seasons with at least one victory to 16. That's the longest active string, as well as the second longest ever. But the streak remains in jeopardy heading into Sunday's race.

"Keeping it going by winning at Martinsville would be pretty special, although we'll take it wherever it comes," said Rudd, who will dissolve his own team at the end of this season and drive next year for Robert Yates.

Three of Rudd's 20 victories have come on the .533-mile Martinsville oval.

The 43-year-old driver from Chesapeake, Va., will defend his race win with a different chassis, mostly because Bill Ingle is no longer his crew chief.

"That chassis needed a special Bill Ingle recipe to work, it seems like," Rudd explained. "The rest of us can't seem to make it work. When we'd hit it right, it was fast. We just didn't hit it right that often."

That pretty much sums up Rudd's disappointing season. He is 34th in the points and has only two top-10 finishes in 27 races.

"It took us a long time to figure out what we had to do to get it right," Rudd said. "Now that we're starting to get it right, maybe we can prove to some people we still know how to win."

Gearing up for Martinsville
Gordy Arbitter, the gear specialist on Steve Park's Pennzoil Racing team, finds Martinsville Speedway's half-mile oval a scary place.

"When I think about Martinsville, I think of what it would be like to be unemployed," Arbitter said. "That's how much gear specialists fear that place. If you are ever going to have nightmares about a track, it's Martinsville."

The reason for his fears is that choosing the right gears and making them last during the 500-lap race on the paperclip-shaped track is really difficult.

"It's tougher than any road course we run on," Arbitter said. "On road courses, the gears and transmission take a lot of pounding and sometimes a part will just break."

Because the driver is on and off the throttle so much, gear temperatures can reach 280 degrees.

"No matter how big of a cooler or how big a fan you put on the gear, it's not going to be enough," he said.

"I'd like to stay home Sunday. But, if you survive and do well, it's a pretty cool feeling."

2000 Taurus makes debut in Atlanta
The 2000 NASCAR version of the Ford Taurus made its inaugural speedway run in a closed test session at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with Mark Martin at the wheel.

The 90-minute test session was conducted under the watchful eye of NASCAR president Mike Helton and Winston Cup director Gary Nelson, as well as a contingent from Ford, led by operations manager Greg Specht, NASCAR program manager Jay Novak and NASCAR technical consultant Preston Miller.

Martin, coming off a victory last Sunday in Dover, Del., was all smiles following the run.

"It was well balanced and drove nice," said Martin, a four-time Atlanta winner. "NASCAR just wanted to see it on the track. It was just a shakedown, since we did only 23 laps."

Jimmy Fennig, Martin's crew chief at Roush Racing, said: "It was good for the first time out on the track."

He added that there shouldn't be much of a transition with this model change compared with the switch from the Thunderbird to Taurus at the start of the 1998 season.

"The Taurus was more stable than the Thunderbird," Fennig said. "The Taurus to the Thunderbird was a difference. The Taurus to Taurus change is only a minor difference."

Stat of the week
If Dale Jarrett finishes sixth or better in each of the seven remaining races, he will win the Winston Cup championship, no matter what anyone else does. So far this season, Jarrett has finished sixth or better in 20 of 27 starts.		 


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Martinsville has long list of unlikely winners