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"The neat thing is, if you unload with a car that's fast right off the bat, you know it's always gonna race good. So I feel real good about the Pepsi 400."
Wallace had practiced decently enough in the 40-minute and one-hour sessions that were held Thursday in preparation for Friday morning's rain-delayed Bud Pole Qualifying session. But a funny thing happened to Wallace's No. 2 Miller Lite Ford on its qualifying run.
On the second lap, on which virtually every one of the 44 drivers that set a time picked up as much as eight tenths of a second, Wallace dropped 100 RPMs, and out of the top-36 drivers that qualified on speed.
"We ran great in all our practice sessions -- no worse than 10th in either of them," he said. "I went out to qualify and I ran the way I did and I asked the guys, 'What in the hell did you change?'
"They said they changed hardly anything -- a jet in the carburetor, did this, did that -- and it all made sense to me that it should have been things that should have made the car faster, but (it didn't)."
Wallace's crew contemplated an engine change Friday afternoon as rain fell and wiped out both 45-minute pre-race practice sessions. But in the end they opted to go with the status quo.
"They've checked everything and gone through it all to make sure it's all right, because it (qualifying performance) didn't make any sense," Wallace said. "The first lap, I jumped up and the thing was up 50 RPM higher than it's been running and I went 'Aaaw, man -- my second lap is really gonna be good.'
"Then all of a sudden the motor lost 100 RPMs and I went, 'What just happened?' I could just see it dying off."
Wallace's demeanor could've mirrored the steely clouds blocking the sunshine at Daytona, but he looked at the bright side.
"Hell, I know we're gonna run good," Wallace said. "But I'll tell you what, it really gets under my skin to qualify bad. It sets the whole tone and you get upset and all that.
"But today, when I qualified bad, I checked with the guys to make sure the race set-up was all set, left the track and had lunch. Everything was cool."
Wallace didn't have a top-five finish in 19 starts in the Pepsi 400 until 1998, but he's had two since then -- including a Daytona career best-tying third in 2000 -- and he's come an awful long way from thrashing around in mid-pack or tumbling down the backstretch in the Daytona 500, too.
"The Pepsi 400 has been a good race to me," Wallace said. "It seems like my whole life turned around at Daytona in 1998, when (team owner Roger) Penske and I and the guys and Jeremy (Mayfield) hooked up and brought team cars down here and man, we flew.
"I thought we had the Daytona 500 won and we led the most laps in the Pepsi 400 two years in a row. We had a good run last year, here, so I'm very optimistic we're gonna run good."
For the 44th Pepsi 400, Wallace is in one of two sets of three brothers that will compete in the race. The 45-year-old St. Louis native will join younger brothers Mike, 43, in the No. 33 1-800-CALL ATT Chevrolet and Kenny, 38, in the No. 98 Stacker 2 Chevrolet.
Also in the race are the Bodine brothers: Geoffrey, 53, who will start second in the No. 09 Miccosukee Resort Ford; Brett, 43, in the No. 11 Hooters Restaurants Ford and Todd, 38, in the No. 26 Discover Card Ford.
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