March 24, 2003
- Kerry Earnhardt hopes to make 2nd Cup start at Texas; Spencer in a 2nd team Busch car: FitzBradshaw Racing will field the # 83 Aaron’s Dream Machine Chevy in the Samsung/Radio Shack 500 on March 30, 2003 at Texas Motor Speedway. The car will be driven by Kerry Earnhardt. Earnhardt was slated to drive the #83 Aaron’s Dream Machine in select Winston Cup Series races during the 2002 season, however, rain cancelled qualifying for all events. Those were FitzBradshaw’s first attempts in the Winston Cup Series and no owner points had been accumulated. “We’re excited about this race,” Earnhardt said. “We tried a couple times last year to make races in the Aaron’s Dream Machine, and each time we tried we got rained out. It was a pretty big joke around the garage.”
“This is great for us,” FitzBradshaw co-owner Armando Fitz said. “We’re going to have two Busch Series cars competing in Texas, plus Kerry in the Aaron’s Dream Machine for the Cup race. We’re taking huge steps in the direction we need to in order to be a competitive team in NASCAR.” Earnhardt, who has tentative plans to run several more Winston Cup races this year, will be joined in the Texas Busch Series race by Jimmy Spencer, who will be piloting the #82 Jani-King Chevrolet for FitzBradshaw Racing.(FitzBradshaw Racing PR)(3-24-2003) - Rumblings – Bristol: #97-Kurt Busch’s victory in the Food City 500 was worth $157,790 from the over $4.5M in posted awards, and was the usual hard-fought BMS win. They just don’t come easy at this fast half-miler, but being able to carry our flag around on a victory lap has got to be a feeling above all others. Teammate Matt Kenseth was 0.390 seconds behind in second place.
Ricky Rudd (4th) had his best finish since he was 3rd at Martinsville last October.
Greg Biffle (5th) had his career-best finish today. His previous best was last week at Darlington when he finished 12th.
Sterling Marlin (6th) had his best finish since he was 4th at Darlington last September.
Kenny Wallace (10th) had his best finish since he was 10th at Rockingham in February of 2002.
Brett Bodine (24th) had his best finish since he was 20th at Richmond last September.
STREAKIN….Matt Kenseth has 5 Top-10’s in a row.
This Week’s Elevator….UP: Operator of the Week is Matt Kenseth (+35), followed by Ricky Rudd (+30), Kenny Wallace (+30), and Kevin Harvick (+20). DOWN: The Big Dropper was Mike Skinner (-35), followed by Ken Schrader (-34), Ward Burton (-22), Terry Labonte (-22), Ryan Newman (-21), and Tony Raines (-20).
Kevin Harvick led today for the first time since he led once for three laps at Talladega last October. We’ve had 26 different leaders this year.
Matt Kenseth padded his points lead today. He now has a 138 point margin over new second place driver Kurt Busch (his lead was 57 last week over Tony Stewart). The best move forward in the points this week goes to Ricky Rudd (17th to 9th), while in the opposite direction goes Dave Blaney (7th to 16th).(Stock Car Fans)(3-24-2003) - Petty to the hospital UPDATE 3: Kyle Petty has been transferred to a local Bristol hospital for further observation, Petty was awake and alert otherwise. This ends Petty’s 40 race streak of not having an DNF-Did Not Finish.
UPDATE: Winston Cup driver Kyle Petty was airlifted to Bristol Regional Medical Center for evaluation following a hard wreck on Lap 424 of 500 in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Ward Burton spun in Turn 3, hit Petty’s No. 45 Dodge and Petty’s car swung hard into the wall, driver’s side first. Petty had to be assisted out of his car by medical personnel and went to the track’s infield care center for initial evaluation. He appeared very groggy. Petty was awake and alert at the care center but was sent to the hospital for precautionary measures. Petty was expected to be released from the hospital later Sunday. “He just said he hurt all over,” said Petty’s crew chief, Steven Lane. “I think they are just going to take him for the sake of caution just to make sure he is OK. I hope that’s all that it is. He took a hard lick.”(ThatsRacin.com)(3-23-2003)
UPDATE 2: Kyle Petty was treated and released from Bristol Regional Medical Center on Sunday night after a hard impact late in Sunday’s race.(Roanoke Times)
UPDATE 3: Kyle Petty returned home Sunday night following the Food City 500 NASCAR Winston Cup race. He is expected to be ready for this week’s events at Texas Motor Speedway. Petty was examined at Bristol (Tenn.) Regional following a crash Sunday, and was released. He will obviously follow up with a routine examination from his personal physician this week. “He’s very sore,” said Steven Lane, crew chief for Petty’s #45 Georgia-Pacific Dodge. “He hit pretty hard, so you would expect that. But he should be ready to go at Texas this week.”(Williams Company)(3-24-2003) - Bristol TV Ratings Down: Today’s Sports Business Daily says Nielsen Media Research’s overnight numbers show that Fox’s broadcast of Sunday’s Food City 500 Winston Cup race drew a 5.1 rating and an 11 share, well off last year’s final 6.2/16. The race figures trail four individual NCAA basketball tournament games on CBS, but the war with Iraq appears to be having a major impact on all sports broadcasts. The Daily says ratings are off more than 20 percent for CBS’s coverage of the NCAA tournament. CBS, for instance, earned a 5..2/10 overnight Nielsen rating for yesterday’s coverage of the tournament from noon to 9:15 p.m. (Eastern time), down 24 percent from last year’s 6.8/14. On Saturday CBS earned a 5.2/11 from 1 to 11 p.m., down 24 percent from last year’s 6.8/15.(Winston Cup Scene Daily Newsletter)(3-24-2003)
- McGraw to be Honored: Andy Belmont wanted to try something a little different for this week’s Busch Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. “From a competitive standpoint, nothing has changed. We’re going down there to run as hard as we can run, and see what we can do,” Belmont said. “But, having grown up near Philly, well, I had to do something . . .” Tug McGraw, 58, the tenacious retired major league relief pitcher, just had a brain tumor removed while in a Tampa, FL, hospital. McGraw pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies [Jayski’s team] from 1975 until his retirement in 1984 and threw the last pitch in the 1980 World Series to help win the World Championship for the Phillies. McGraw who works for the team, is also a Pitching Consultant with the Phillies. While with the New York Mets (1965-74) in 1973 he led the team with the phrase, “You Gotta Believe.” The Mets lost the World Series that year to the Oakland A’, but McGraw also pitched for the Mets when they won the 1969 World Series. “So we put ‘Get Well Tug McGraw’ on our car, and ‘You Gotta Believe.’ We have to believe he is going to recover and be fine,” Belmont said of his #91 Pontiac, which is sponsored by Southern Pan Services for this race. Verizon sponsors Belmont’s ARCA entry, the 1 800 CALL VZ Ford. McGraw, whose real name is Frank Edwin McGraw Jr., has long been one of the favorite of major league baseball fans, and was always known as fun loving. “He’s the kind of guy who helped build popularity for baseball at a time when baseball was dragging a little with the fans,” Belmont said. “He was great with kids and great with adults. I don’t know if Tug McGraw was ever at a race in his life but, at heart, I have to believe he is a racer. He is the type of person every professional athlete should aspire to be.”(Williams Company PR)(3-24-2003)
- Harvick Plans Triple Header in August: Trucks will return to Bristol when the circuit comes back here in August. Kevin Harvick, who won Saturday’s Busch series race, said yesterday he’ll run all three events.(Richmond Times Dispatch)(3-24-2003)
- Interesting 2000th race fact: Yesterday was the 2,000th Winston Cup point race. The 12 drivers who make up the top 10 in victories (ties create extra spots) have won 45.1 percent of those races. A total of 166 drivers have won at least one race, 61 winning only once.(Richmond Times Dispatch)(3-24-2003)
- New Racing Show to debut in July: A new motorsports-themed show is preparing for launch in the coming months on The National Network (TNN – used to cover NASCAR as the Nashville Network). Racer’s Edge [www.racersedgetv.net] is scheduled to debut on July 6 at 11:00am Eastern and Pacific Time. Racer’s Edge is a new 30-minute show that gives an inside and detailed look at the workings of race car preparation, maintenance and set-up. Topics will explore commonalities in preparation, maintenance and set-up in various forms of motorsports, everything from drag strips to dirt tracks, motorcycles to NASCAR. A guest for interaction and expertise will accompany host Troy Selberg [former Winston Cup crew chief] during each show. Selberg is a racing industry veteran, mainly NASCAR. He’s a second-generation racer with more than 20 years experience. Selberg gained and retained a great deal of knowledge throughout the years and now plans on relaying it to racing fans across the country. As a NASCAR Winston Cup Series crew chief, he was in contact with thousands of fans.. It was that type of interaction in addition to his natural communication ability that made him the obvious choice to host Racer’s Edge. Racer’s Edge promises to be the highest quality instructional/educational racing show on television.. Each show will be geared towards one or two specific topics, allowing the host and guest to go in-depth, leaving no corner unturned. Each show will be shot on location in a race shop, lit like a studio, with countless racing props in the background. Having a controlled environment is the key in order to stay consistent and remain focused on production content. Hands-on visuals and will play a large part in the success of the show and, when necessary, state of the art 3D animation will be used to further enhance production.(Racer’s Edge PR)(3-24-2003)
- Sad News: Sammy Packard, who was the last surviving participant of the meeting which formed NASCAR, died at his home here Sunday morning. Packard, 83, was part of Bill France Sr.’s stock-car summit meeting held at the Streamline Hotel in December 1947. He built, owned and raced cars throughout his career. The passion for speed and the sport of racing was evidenced by his frequent hospital visits. “Never expected to last this long,” Packard told the News-Journal in February. “Figured if I got to 60 I’d be lucky. I got banged up several times. Been in the hospital 27 times . . . no reason I should be here. “There were a few racing accidents, and some regular hospital stuff — ulcers, took my spleen out, motorcycle accidents, broken legs and things like that.” Before health problems slowed him down, Packard owned a race shop in South Daytona where he specialized in rebuilding vintage midget and sprint cars. More recently, Packard could be found in his garage at home, working on a midget car his daughter Priscilla races in vintage races around the state. At some of those vintage shows, Packard could not resist the urge to compete and would buckle into his 1950s-era vintage sprint car. “We’re listed as an exhibition, but you don’t put an old race driver in a car and tell him to take it easy,” he said. “We’re not supposed to be racing, but we are.” Packard was from the Northeast, living in Rhode Island, but he raced all over the country. His specialty was running midget cars throughout New England, but he’d also come south to drive Daytona’s beach-road course in the late 1930s. When he came here to race in the late 1930s, he would moonlight as a mechanic at France’s Main Street gas station. One reason Packard liked to race here, other than the unusual course and nice winter weather, was that Daytona always paid the advertised purse. Packard had been burned several times by fly-by-night racing promoters of the day. Paying competitors the promised purse was a major topic of discussion at the meeting which formed NASCAR. “What we discussed was getting money put in the bank before a race, so the promoter couldn’t skip out on us,” Packard said. “That seemed to be one of the main problems we were having. We’d get done running somewhere, and the promoter would skip town with the money. It happened to me several times.” While the issue of payment was important to Packard, he didn’t have much to say at the meeting, even though he and two other racers drove here from Rhode Island to participate. “I didn’t have a helluva lot to say. I was more or less a listener,” Packard said. “I ended up being the representative of the New England area, which was nothing, because there was no NASCAR up there and I was the only person who knew about it.” Of course now NASCAR has become a big-league sport on par with the NFL or MLB. Packard watched the sport grow from club racers to corporate giants over the last 50 years. “Nobody expected anything like this,” he says. “It’s grown way out of proportion. It’s taken everything away from the garage man. Now, you have to be a millionaire to even think about getting into it. My sponsorships used to be $25 and $50. And you were glad to get it. “The idea in the beginning was to take care of the drivers at the smaller tracks because that’s all we had.” As the last surviving member of the meeting that formed NASCAR, Packard gained a degree of notoriety, especially when NASCAR celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1998. “It makes you know you’re gonna die before too long, when you know everybody around you is dead,” he says. “It gives the facts of life to you.” Funeral arrangements are pending.(Daytona Beach News Journal)(3-24-2003)
- #22 and Smith get a sponsor for Texas: The Harvey Hotel DFW Airport North will sponsor driver Regan Smith and the #22 Bost Motorsports Busch Series team in Saturday’s O’Reilly 300 NASCAR Busch Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. Bost Motorsports is a first year team with Raybestos Rookie of the Year candidate Regan Smith as driver. Smith, 19, is a former World Karting Association and Allison Legacy Series national champion. Danny Bost, a Concord based real estate developer, owns Bost Motorsports. Formerly, he was co-owner of the team but assumed sole ownership on Jan. 1. The team has current plains for competing in all 34 Busch Series event. Smith gave the car its best finish at arguably the series toughest track – a 19th at Darlington on Mar. 17. The Harvey Hotel DFW Airport North is a first class hotel located just outside Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. This 15-story high-rise hotel is Irving’s largest hotel and a feature of the surrounding area. The hotel amenities include: an indoor and outdoor pool, an exercise facility, a meeting and a facility, business center, valet service, coin laundry, complimentary USA Today newspaper, gift shop, room service and 2 restaurants.(Bost Motorsports PR)(3-24-2003)
- Kerry Earnhardt hopes to make 2nd Cup start at Texas; Spencer in a 2nd team Busch car: FitzBradshaw Racing will field the # 83 Aaron’s Dream Machine Chevy in the Samsung/Radio Shack 500 on March 30, 2003 at Texas Motor Speedway. The car will be driven by Kerry Earnhardt. Earnhardt was slated to drive the #83 Aaron’s Dream Machine in select Winston Cup Series races during the 2002 season, however, rain cancelled qualifying for all events. Those were FitzBradshaw’s first attempts in the Winston Cup Series and no owner points had been accumulated. “We’re excited about this race,” Earnhardt said. “We tried a couple times last year to make races in the Aaron’s Dream Machine, and each time we tried we got rained out. It was a pretty big joke around the garage.”
“This is great for us,” FitzBradshaw co-owner Armando Fitz said. “We’re going to have two Busch Series cars competing in Texas, plus Kerry in the Aaron’s Dream Machine for the Cup race. We’re taking huge steps in the direction we need to in order to be a competitive team in NASCAR.” Earnhardt, who has tentative plans to run several more Winston Cup races this year, will be joined in the Texas Busch Series race by Jimmy Spencer, who will be piloting the #82 Jani-King Chevrolet for FitzBradshaw Racing.(FitzBradshaw Racing PR)(3-24-2003) - #75 Crew Member to run ARCA race: Caleb Holman is planning his ARCA debut next month at Nashville with the hope of impressing NASCAR enough to be approved for the Busch race at Richmond. The 19-year-old Holman from Abingdon, VA, is a crew member for the #75 Henderson Motorsports Busch team.(Bristol Herald Courier via BGN Racing)(3-24-2003)
- McGraw to be Honored: Andy Belmont wanted to try something a little different for this week’s Busch Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. “From a competitive standpoint, nothing has changed. We’re going down there to run as hard as we can run, and see what we can do,” Belmont said. “But, having grown up near Philly, well, I had to do something . . .” Tug McGraw, 58, the tenacious retired major league relief pitcher, just had a brain tumor removed while in a Tampa, FL, hospital. McGraw pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies [Jayski’s team] from 1975 until his retirement in 1984 and threw the last pitch in the 1980 World Series to help win the World Championship for the Phillies. McGraw who works for the team, is also a Pitching Consultant with the Phillies. While with the New York Mets (1965-74) in 1973 he led the team with the phrase, “You Gotta Believe.” The Mets lost the World Series that year to the Oakland A’, but McGraw also pitched for the Mets when they won the 1969 World Series. “So we put ‘Get Well Tug McGraw’ on our car, and ‘You Gotta Believe.’ We have to believe he is going to recover and be fine,” Belmont said of his #91 Pontiac, which is sponsored by Southern Pan Services for this race. Verizon sponsors Belmont’s ARCA entry, the 1 800 CALL VZ Ford. McGraw, whose real name is Frank Edwin McGraw Jr., has long been one of the favorite of major league baseball fans, and was always known as fun loving. “He’s the kind of guy who helped build popularity for baseball at a time when baseball was dragging a little with the fans,” Belmont said. “He was great with kids and great with adults. I don’t know if Tug McGraw was ever at a race in his life but, at heart, I have to believe he is a racer. He is the type of person every professional athlete should aspire to be.”(Williams Company PR)(3-24-2003)
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