March 28, 2004
- Get Well The father of Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick, Joseph “Papa Joe” Hendrick Jr., is at a Charlotte, N.C., hospital with an undisclosed illness. “Papa Joe” Hendrick co-owns Hendrick’s #5 Busch and #25 Nextel Cup series teams along with his grandson, Ricky Hendrick. “I just like to say my thoughts and prayers are with Papa Joe,” said Kyle Busch, who drives the No. 5 Chevrolet and finished third in Saturday’s race at Bristol, Tenn. “He’s a little bit sick right now. I don’t know exactly what it is, but my prayers are with him. “We just want to make sure that Papa Joe and Rick and everybody is OK at home.”
“Papa Joe” Hendrick began racing modifieds in the early 1960s. While fielding a car with driver Ray Hendrick (no relation), the team won races throughout Virginia at such tracks as South Boston, Martinsville and Richmond.(ThatsRacin.com)(3-28-2004)
- Busch wins at Bristol: #97-Kurt Busch disobeyed his crew chief and then held off Rusty Wallace, a determined veteran whose mastery of Bristol Motor Speedway is legendary, to win the Food City 500 on Sunday. Wallace has won nine times at this track and tried desperately to make that 10 and snap a 103-race winless streak on Sunday, but the 25-year-old Busch is assembling a pretty good record here, too. Busch’s victory was his third straight at Bristol and his fourth in the past five Nextel Cup events held here [It is Busch’s 9th career win]. To get this one, Busch stayed on the track despite crew chief Jimmy Fennig’s orders to come in on a caution flag with just more than 120 laps to go. Busch had pitted during a cycle of green-flag stops about 20 laps earlier and chose to stay out to gain track position. Eventually, that decision paid off. It got him the lead and he kept it despite a spate of late-race cautions, including one on Lap 493 that brought out a red flag on the last lap possible for NASCAR to use that to get a green-flag finish. The green flew again on Lap 498, leaving Wallace just two laps to try to dislodge Busch from the top spot. #29-Kevin Harvick ended up third with #40-Sterling Marlin and #17-Matt Kenseth fifth.
It was a typical day at Bristol. #17-Matt Kenseth and #42-Jamie McMurray banged fenders coming to the checkered flag, with Kenseth getting fifth and McMurray sliding to eighth after going up the track in Turn 4. On the aptly-named cool-down lap, McMurray chased down Kenseth’s Ford and hit him twice, finally spinning the #17 out near the entrance to pit road.(see full report at ThatsRacin.com)
Race results at:
JAYSKI’s Bristol Results Page
ThatsRacin.com
NASCAR.com.(3-28-2004)
- Andretti may run the Indy 500: John Andretti, temporarily out of a ride on the Nextel Cup circuit, said he’s in negotiations with a team that would field a car for him in the Indianapolis 500, a race he’s run seven times.(Tennessean)(3-28-2004)
- New Tennessee Licence Tag: A new NASCAR license tag was unveiled Saturday at BMS and is now available through the Tennessee Department of Vehicles. Monies raised will go to Bristol Speedway Children’s Charities and the Tennessee State Museum.(Bristol Herald Courier)(3-28-2004)
- Busch Admits he was 99% Wrong: The last time Kurt Busch raced at Bristol Motor Speedway in August, he did exactly one thing right – he won the Sharpie 500. On every other front, the weekend was a disaster. Busch came to Bristol on the heels of a post-race incident with Jimmy Spencer the previous weekend at Michigan. In another flare-up of what had long been a tempestuous relationship between Busch and Spencer, the two had bumped in the garage area following the Michigan race and Spencer wound up whapping Busch in the nose. In some ways, it was remarkable to see Busch go from victim to villain in the aftermath of that incident. In other ways, it was painful to watch. NASCAR suspended Spencer for the Bristol weekend, so he wasn’t at the track to address the issue – or to stick a foot in his mouth. So Busch did it. Instead of keeping quiet and starting to allow the matter to blow over, he heaped fuel on the fire with comments that were either inappropriately brash or provably untrue. Remember, it was Busch who got punched in the nose while sitting in his car at Michigan on Sunday. But by the end of the Bristol race the following Saturday night he was the bad guy being booed – lustily – by more than 150,000 fans. “I probably reacted to all of that 99 percent wrongly,” Busch admitted Saturday as he prepared for the Food City 500.(see ThatsRacin.com for the full article)(3-28-2004)
- Site down HOWEVER: noticed – the site started by driver Andy Belmont www.fieldfillers.com is now show as “The page cannot be found”, so ? See the past news on the #02 Team News and Links page.(3-27-2004)
UPDATE – and a nice gesture…thanks: They are making some updates and changes to the web site this weekend (since Belmont is not at the track) and it is hoped the site will be back up on Monday. So check out their sponsor: AcademicComputers.com. They are offering $25 to the Jayski Victory Junction Computer Lab for each computer sold until July 1. They have also laid out some numbers for possible car sponsorship later in the year if they can sell enough computers. The first plan starts at 500 computers.(3-28-2004)
- Shelmerdine on ‘field-fillers’: Quote-unquote [#72] Kirk Shelmerdine on the whole “field-filler” issue: “I think most of them are that. If you haven’t won in three to four years, you’re a field-filler anyway. You’re just wasting a lot more money than we are.” Shelmerdine’s is one of the low-budget operations that have been rounding out the fields each week. He’ll start 41st today with a qualifying speed almost 15 mph slower than Newman’s pole-winning speed. He said he doesn’t feel at risk in a slower car. “There’s not really a direct parallel between speed and safety,” he said. “The fast cars are safe. The slow cars are safe. NASCAR makes sure of that, and we who put the cars together make sure of that.” Shelmerdine has competed in four of five races this season and hasn’t lasted more than 46 laps in any of them. He’s made $249,102.(Richmond Times Dispatch)(3-28-2004)
- Biffle to have McLaughlin standing by: #60-Greg Biffle, one of three Nextel Cup drivers also running a full Busch Series schedule this season, said his team is working out the travel details for the Busch races not run in conjunction with Cup. One element of that problem has been taken care of with the hiring of Busch veteran Mike McLaughlin, who will step into the Busch car when travel conflicts arise with Biffle. “The biggest thing that will impact us is weather. If it rains practice out or delays practice, we would have problems,” Biffle said. “We secured a deal with Mike and he is going to go test with us and get used to the car and drive it the way I like it and see if we can work together. So if a situation ever arises, we have somebody.”(ThatsRacin.com)(3-28-2004)
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