Rusty Wallace says a decision to pit late i Sunday's rain-shortened Daytona 500 cost him a top-10 finish. Credit: Getty Images
As told to Marty Smith, Turner Sports Interactive
February 20, 2003
2:48 PM EST (1948 GMT)
We've been down at Daytona for two weeks for the Daytona 500, and man that's the biggest race of the year and kicks off the new season. A lot of people are upset about the rain-shortened victory, but that's racing, guys.
Rain delays are such a weird thing. If you're leading or in the top-three or four, you're really happy and content if they call it off. I remember last year's Pepsi 400. I was running in the top-three all day long, and running second when the flag flew, so I'd have been just fine with rain that night.
 | RUSTY WALLACE | | | | | | | |
|
|
But when you come down for the 500 and it's only halfway through the race, after you've worked all winter long in the shop and all week long at Daytona to get the car ready, you're really looking forward to that last 100 laps. Then, all the sudden it rains.
Rain everywhere else is one thing, but for the 500, nobody really likes to see that. I don't even think Michael Waltrip liked it. Sure, he loved winning the Daytona 500 and I give him all the credit in the world for doing that, but there's something just not quite right about the Daytona 500 only getting halfway done.
I know me, personally, I was running sixth and my whole windshield was covered with oil from Mike Skinner's car, and I had to make a pit stop to remove a tear off. Because of that, I went back out on the track and had lost like 20 positions. And it had started raining.
I wasn't too worried, though, because I thought we had at least 30 or 40 more minutes before it would force a delay. If I'd known it would rain so hard so soon, I'd have stayed out there and finished sixth or seventh. It's upsetting to lose 20 positions because we pitted.
That's one of the reason's guys like me wanted to go back to green flag racing. I'm not taking anything away from Michael, though, because he had a hot rod, and I commend him for the win.
Now that Daytona is over, we head to Rockingham -- something totally different. We've been at Daytona for a 12 or 13 days driving restrictor plate cars and watching different types of racing. Now we'll go to Rockingham, be there three days, total with high downforce cars.
We'll get to see what the cars really look like, and how all the new body styles perform. I can't wait to get to Rockingham to see how these high downforce cars run, but the bigger test will come next week at Las Vegas -- a real fast, smooth, high horsepower track.
But this week at Rockingham handling is everything because the surface is so gritty. It's one of the only tracks that I like running the harder compound tire on.
At Rockingham and Darlington we're pretty comfortable with already, because the surface of both is so abrasive and wears tires out so fast. But at other tracks, I'm pumping really hard to take some downforce off of these cars and go with a softer tire. We need to do that at Vegas, for sure, because the aero push is really bad.
I think this week will be a real test for us all. It'll be exciting to see the new downforce cars run. Somebody's going to have a real hot car, but we don't know who yet. The Chevrolets are real happy and I know my new Dodge is awesome.
I'm really happy with it, so I can't wait to see how the new Dodge stacks up against these Chevys. We'll need about five races under our belt to really understand these tires and see who's got what. After Rockingham, Vegas, maybe Texas and Bristol, it'll become crystal clear who the best of the best are.
Rusty's Rundown appears each Wednesday on NASCAR.com. For more info on Rusty Wallace, please visit his Web site at www.rustywallace.com.
|
