Roush Racing teammates #50-Jon Wood and #99-Carl Edwards spent Tuesday testing at Ace Speedway in Elon, N.C., preparing for the upcoming race at Martinsville Speedway on April 17. Ace is a four-tenths-mile short track which has characteristics similar to the half-mile of Martinsville. Both drivers felt the test was extremely worthwhile and they came away with valuable information. We were pretty fast right away, Wood said of the #50 F-150. It is a brand new truck and its the first Roush-built chassis out of Concord (N.C.) that weve ever raced. We spent some time getting used to that along with the new tires. It was our first short-track test with the new body, although that didnt seem to make much of a difference at a track like that. We spent our time working on some things to make the truck turn better and trying to get better forward bite. Those are both very important at Martinsville and some of the things we learned should help us race better. We won there last fall and wed sure like to win it again. Edwards is trying to better a fourth-place and a second-place finish at Martinsville last year. Testing at similar tracks before the race was an important part of the teams strong runs in 2003. We tested right before the Martinsville race last year and it really seemed to pay off for us, said Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Superchips Ford F-150. I think we are going to try to test one more time before the race to make a little more progress at going faster. The test yesterday went really well. It was good to get back to the feel of a short track after spending all of this year so far working on our set-ups for big, fast tracks like Daytona and Atlanta. It was also our first test with the new tires, which had a different feel. Im excited to go short-track racing again after this test. The Roush teams should be strong.(Roush Racing PR)(3-25-2004)
