Around The Track: RIR has great racing surface

"I think it is one of the smartest layouts on the circuit. To me, if I was going to have a race track or build one, I'd build one just like it."

	Ricky Rudd

Ricky Rudd, driver of the #21 Motorcraft Racing Taurus, has 49 career starts at Richmond International Speedway, scoring two victories, two poles, 19 top-fives and 27 top-10s. Ricky has competed at both the old track and owner Paul Sawyer's reconfigured .75-mile D-shaped oval, and has been successful on both. Below, he describes racing on the two layouts.

The old Richmond track -- a lot of people didn't like it because it was very slippery, very greasy. But I always liked the old track when it was slick and greasy. I usually could run pretty well there, and I won on the old Fairgrounds.

There weren't a whole lot of guys that could run the high lines in 1 and 2 at Richmond and make it work. There were about three or four guys that would do that. I had success running the high road, and it was a lot of fun. It was a short track and if you had a car that would peel off to the bottom of the racetrack, then that was the preferred groove.

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The middle of the racetrack had no grip and then you had the top of the track. If you had two guys that were racing each other, one would peel off to the bottom and the other would go to the top. The guy on the bottom had the short way around, but when he'd hit the straightaway he usually wouldn't have enough speed to carry him around it so the guy on the outside would go by him. It made for some really good racing that way.

It was a racetrack where you really didn't want to hit the fence. The guardrails were pretty treacherous. It would rip a car to pieces.

Bobby Allison went through the fence there in about 1982. He went down into Turn 1 with a stuck throttle and ran straight through it. He ended up about 10 feet from the grandstand.

At that time they let them work on the cars all night long. You actually took the cars out of the Fairgrounds. I think Gary Nelson was Bobby's crew chief and Robert Yates was the engine builder. They let them take it to one of the buildings outside the Fairgrounds and they worked on it all night. It was a pretty mangled-up mess.

Anyway, the old track was fun. There was nothing on the circuit to compare to it. It was just a greasy, slippery track.

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But I like the new track. I think it is one of the smartest layouts on the circuit. To me, if I was going to have a racetrack or build one, I'd build one just like it. I'd build a three-quarter mile track.

The Sawyers did their research when they built it. They used the right asphalt and the right sealer. They did their homework on how to make the racetrack friendly to the drivers, which, in turn, made for good side-by-side racing.

Two years ago they made a mistake when they sealed the racetrack, and it looked kind of doubtful if good racing would return. But we finally got it worn down and it was pretty good racing when we were there earlier in the year, and it should be even better when we return.

Ricky Rudd drives the No. 21 Motorcraft Racing Ford Taurus owned by Wood Brothers Racing.