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Features

Then & Now

NASCAR.COM pays tribute to two outgoing vets
and welcomes two rookies to the Cup fold.

Each week will preview one year in the career of the retiring drivers,
as well as a pop-culture look at what's going on in the world today.
Mark Martin

Mark Martin

Rusty Wallace

Rusty Wallace

Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace first raced against each other at Bristol in 1988. Bill Elliott won the Valleydale Meats 500 on April 10, while Martin finished second and Wallace was fourth.

The next year, Wallace won the spring race at Bristol -- his third win in the first six races of 1989 -- en route to his Winston Cup championship.

Sunday will be Martin's 37th race at Bristol. He has two wins, 15 top-fives and 20 top-10 finishes. Martin's average finish is 12.0, and he has four DNFs.

The Food City 500 will be Rusty Wallace's 43rd start at Bristol. He has nine wins, 21 top-fives and 28 top-10 finishes. Wallace's average finish is 9.6, and he has three DNFs.

Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch

Travis Kvapil

Travis Kvapil

Nextel Cup rookies Kyle Busch and Travis Kvapil will make their series starts at Bristol, but both have had success on the .533-mile bullring -- albeit in vastly different arenas.

Still, both Cup newbies have two starts -- and two top-10 finishes -- at BMS. But will that success continue against the big boys?

Busch has two career Busch Series starts at Bristol, finishing in third place both times. In last fall's Food City 250, Busch finished behind Buschwhackers Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth.

Kvapil competed in two Truck Series races at Bristol before making the move to the Cup Series this year.

He won the O'Reilly 200 in 2003, and finished eighth in the same event last year.

Also in 1988 ...

  • News
  • Feb. 21 -- On his own televangelism program being taped in Baton Rouge, La., Jimmy Swaggart confesses that he is guilty of an unspecified sin and will be temporarily leaving the pulpit. The "unspecified sin" was an affair with a prostitute.
  • Entertainment
  • April 12 -- Former pop singer Sonny Bono is elected mayor of Palm Springs, Calif. After unsuccessfully running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 1992, Bono was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in '94. He died Jan. 5, 1998, from injuries after hitting a tree while skiing near South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
  • Sports
  • Jan. 16 -- Sports commentator Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder is fired by CBS a day after publicly stating that blacks had been bred to produce stronger offspring during slavery.
  • Deaths
  • Basketball player Pete Maravich ... actor Heather O'Rourke ... singer Andy Gibb ... shipping magnate Christina Onassis ... singer Roy Orbison

Also in 2005 ...

  • News
  • March 16 -- Robert Blake is found not guilty on killing his wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley, in 2001. ... Scott Peterson is sentenced to the death penalty for killing his wife, Laci Peterson, and unborn baby around Christmas 2002.
  • Entertainment
  • March 29 -- Famed attorney Johnnie Cochran, perhaps best known for his successful defense of O.J. Simpson, died after suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. He was 67.
  • Sports
  • March 22 -- Pat Summitt becomes the NCAA's all-time leader in victories as the Tennessee Lady Vols defeat Purdue 75-54. Summitt's 880th victory surpasses former North Carolina men's coach Dean Smith.
  • Still to come in 2005 ...
  • May 12 to June 3 -- Launch window for Space Shuttle Discovery's return to flight with mission STS-114. This is the first flight in more than two years since the breakup of Columbia on its return from mission STS-107.
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