Conversation: Mike Wallace

JOLIET, Ill. -- Mike Wallace came within a lap last weekend of becoming the first NASCAR Busch Series driver to win back-to-back races in 2004.

Wallace, who won the week before at Daytona, ran out of gas as he got the white flag in the Tropicana Twister 300 at Chicagoland Speedway, allowing Justin Labonte to take the victory.

	Mike Wallace celebrates his victory at Daytona on July 2. Credit: Autostock

Still, the victory at Daytona hasn't been forgotten. It halted a 10-year, 137-race winless streak for Wallace in the Busch Series and came not long after older brother Rusty stopped a long slide in Cup.

Mike Wallace sat down with Lee Montgomery of NASCAR.COM during a break at Chicago last weekend to talk about Daytona and what the victory did for his Biagi Bros. team, about his future and about his daughter Chrissy, who is an aspiring driver.

Q: Has the high from the win last week, has that worn off at all yet?

Wallace: I'm trying to not let it wear off at all, even though we're at Chicago getting ready to race. At 1 o'clock on Saturday, nobody will care what we did last week. But I care. No, it hasn't worn off at all. It's pretty cool.

Q: How did you eventually celebrate after the race that day? Were you up really late?

Wallace: Up that night, went through the tech line with the guys, watching them. I never knew you pulled the motors totally out of the car, stuff like that. So the motor's laying out, oil pan's off, cylinder head. When we got done, Fred Biagi, the car owner, called across the street from the speedway and had that Uno's at the Ramada Inn stay open. So we all went over there and had a few drinks and a sandwich. The whole team showed up. My buddy Peter Sospenzo came over. We hung out to about 2:30 in the morning. It was pretty calm, but had a great time celebrating it.

Q: You and your brother Rusty have scored wins after long droughts. Is that kind of a coincidence? Or is it pretty cool the way that's happened?

Wallace: Well, it's coincidental that we both struggled that long to win a race again. I have won some races in the meantime with the trucks and the ARCA cars and Winston West cars and all that, but to be able to win again in a Busch car with the organization that we're with for the length of time it's been, it's really big.

Especially to win at Daytona. All races are big, but Daytona is the race. I'm glad for Rusty. He called me after the race and said, "Great job. It means so much." I said, "Hey, you know exactly what it means. You just had a standing ovation from the crowd at Martinsville a few weeks back." He said, "I know exactly what you mean, so savor it." That's what we did.

Q: Do you think the victory maybe changed some perceptions, not just of you, but the team specifically?

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Wallace: Well, I would hope so. We have a good race team. We have a small race team. If you take and laid it out stat-wise with the people, the technology and all that, we don't really fit on the same page as the Hendricks or DEI or RCR or whatever.

But we've got a lot of passion, a lot of desire. We've got a driver that wants to win, got a bunch of crew guys -- they want to win. That was the first race (some ever won). Like they told me, "If we can celebrate like this every week, let's win one of these every week."

Q: You've got to remind them that it's not that simple, right?

Wallace: They definitely know it's not that simple because we have struggled. And I don't know if I can emphasize how much of a big deal that was. Last year, we went through a year where we just ran so-so, finished 13th in the points, didn't tear up hardly any cars, but never ran all that great. Ran decent on the speedways, decent on the short tracks. Intermediate tracks, we didn't run good.

Come back this year, and we've torn up a lot of stuff being in other people's incidents, just literally in other people's stuff. There was a lot of frustration on our team. To be able to come back and step up and win, again, at Daytona was really a big motivational boost for our organization.

Q: It's funny -- well, it's not funny -- what a victory can do for a team momentum-wise. It kind of makes all the (problems), if there are any problems, just kind of go away. Have you seen that?

Wallace: Yeah, there's a lot of that goes away with victory, a lot of problems, a lot of ill-will. The one thing about racing: it's such a competitive sport. There are a lot of guys who have egos in who don't deserve to have an ego. But everybody's competitive. That's why we're all here. If you weren't competitive and driven to succeed to some level, you wouldn't be in this sport.

It's mentally too tough and physically really tough, on the crew guys especially - the physical part, as far as the time involved. It made everything pretty cool this week and it will continue to be that way.

Q: Long-term, what do the Biagi brothers want to do? Do they want to eventually go Nextel Cup? With you? What's their plan?

	Kenny Wallace congratulates brother Mike on his victory at Daytona. Credit: Autostock

Wallace: What it amounts to is Fred Biagi and his brother Greg -- but Fred's the main person in the team -- (owns the team). I'm actually a small partner in the team. I own a percentage of the race team. It was established from day one, when we put the team together, that let's build a race team, and I'll drive the car for X period of time. If there's a day that I ever get an opportunity again to go Cup racing and want to dedicate myself to that, we'll put somebody else in that Busch car. Or eventually somebody else in it way down the road. Or we'll take the whole program and go Cup racing.

It's kind of diverse in terms of what it can do. Funding dictates it all. I hope what this has done for our organization is prove to some people in corporate America that, "Hey, those guys can win a race. Maybe they can't win every week or be a contender every week, but they can get us a win and do the right things off the racetrack for us." That's what really counts.

Q: Being a guy that's been around a little while, a veteran, do you feel like the past three or four years -- maybe impacted by this "youth movement" with getting rides and stuff like that?

Wallace: There are a couple different things. In my situation, the very best ride I ever had, in all reality, was the 12 car for Penske Racing. I made the best of that. Unfortunately at that time, they decided to close that particular team up. It wasn't like they just put Ryan Newman in it. They closed that team and had Ryan's team (take the number).

My mistake at that particular time and era is I should have capitalized on the good performances of the 12 car before it closed up, and gone out looking for a ride to drive for someone else. It didn't happen, and those jobs were all closed up by the time we realized the team was closed. Then you're kind of outside looking in.

There is a youth movement, per se, but you're seeing veteran drivers win races and all that, so I guess it just depends on what the particular sponsor wants or the owners want. You come to find out that other than a few organizations, if you can stick with somebody four or five years or give them two or three good years, they'd be thrilled to death with that.

Q: You're talking about long-term with you being involved with this team, is Chrissy down the road a part of that maybe?

Wallace: Right now, Chrissy is my middle daughter. She's 16. She runs really, really good in the Legend cars. We are researching some opportunities to get her some Late Model experience to advance her career. She says she wants to race. It's not something I am pushing her (to do).

This is a hard business. I'm not sure I really want my kids to have to deal with it because it's mentally tough and can be abusing at times. But it's also really rewarding when you win some races. We've been able to win over our career, so it's nice.

As good as she races right now, I would love for her to have the opportunity. If it so fits the organization at a later time that we put her in a car, that'd be great.

Q: We've been hearing rumors about her and a chance with Roush. Is she going to be a part of that at all? What's going on there?

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Wallace: I really don't know what's going on there. I'm not sure where that even came from. All I know is Jack and I had one very quick conversation in Richmond. I asked him if at any time would he ever be interested in considering a girl on his team. He said, "Look, we're doing this show. If it materializes, maybe we could try her out or something."

That's the last conversation that was ever said. Then the other day, it showed up everywhere. I hope she does. I think she's talented enough that if there's an opportunity to try out or get in and work with an organization that she can do the job.

She's grown up around this sport, so she knows what goes on off the racetrack. She's definitely shown that she can get it done on the racetrack. But I need somebody like a Roush or a Hendrick or a Childress to take her under the wing and go with her.

Q: When she first came to you and said, "Dad, I want to get in a car," did you cringe?

Wallace: No, not really. I think I was really supportive of it, mainly because I'm gone on all the weekends, and honestly, I've missed a lot of the kids' ballgames and things like that over the years as they grew up. When she first started racing, it was structured around the Tuesday night racing at Lowe's Motor Speedway, the Summer Shootout Series. It was something I could go do.

We do it as a family. Everybody shows up at a different time, me and my wife, Carla, and Lindsey, our oldest daughter. Matt, my little boy, always goes with me. But it's just a fun thing for us to do. Now, it's become intense because she runs up front. Finished second this past week. I think she's third or fourth in the points right now.

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Kurt Andrews, who takes care of her car, the championship is all he's thinking. He wants to win a points championship with her, so we're trying.

Q: So you won and she was second last weekend. A pretty good weekend for you guys.

Wallace: It was a great weekend for us. I won on Friday night, and she made the comment, "Well, dad, I'll step up to the table." She was leading the race and a restart came. They have this thing called a "choose lane," where you can double-file. She got beat on a restart just a tick, and a guy got ahead of her. She was so aggravated and mad at herself after the race. But she ran second. She said, "He shouldn't have beat me on the restart." That was the difference there.