Prior to Sunday, Ricky Rudd's best finish in 2005 was a 24th at Daytona. Credit: Autostock

Rudd relishes first top-10 in six races this season

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Ricky Rudd has had fast cars all season long, but all that had meant through the first five races of the season is that he arrived at the accidents which ruined his race-day performance that much quicker.

ADVANCE AUTO PARTS 500 •   Results •   Standings •   Harvick hampered by clutch troubles •   Johnson perseveres with 12th consecutive top-10 •   Evernham shows flashes in Kahne, Mayfield runs •   Rudd relishes first top-10 in six races •   Frustration mounts at Joe Gibbs Racing •   Notes: Edwards' season takes hit on short tracks

All that changed Sunday, when Rudd finally put the fast car in the right place and raced to seventh place in the Advance Auto Parts 500. It was his first top-10 finish since Homestead last year, and it got him a guaranteed starting spot for next week's event in Texas.

"We did something really good and solid [Sunday], if not real pretty," Rudd said. "We really needed a good, solid run. We've had great cars all year, but we've found every wreck there was out there all year, except for [Sunday]. We were right in the middle of a bunch of them, it just didn't get bent up. I don't think there was a dent on the car."

Rudd started 13th on Sunday, and that was as low as he ran all day long. By Lap 50 he was 10th, and except for a 50-lap stretch right after that, he ran in the top eight the rest of the way.

Final lapsGordon comes back from three laps down for the victory Tough breakStewart loses a tire and his chance for a win Spin cycleGordon bumps Busch and sends him into the wall Tire troublesDale Jr. touches Bliss and gets a severe tire rub Heavy damageEdwards gets loose and collects H. Sadler on Lap 68 Early cautionNewman suffers damage after contact with Riggs Sign up for TrackPass now BUY YOUR NEXTEL DRIVER PHONE

"It's a relief," Rudd said. "The team has had good cars just like this all year, but we are just kind of a freak deal. I've never experienced anything like it before. Fatback McSwain called a great race [Sunday], and we probably had a little better car than what we ended up with. We needed long runs. We were not very good on the short run."

As the race progressed and Rudd hung tough in the top group, there was a feeling that something was bound to happen to the famed No. 21. But it never did, not like it had in the previous five races.

That isn't to say that Rudd wasn't around any of the 16 caution flags that waved over Martinsville. It was just that Rudd didn't have the bad luck to get caught in them. "I was sort of in a couple where they were spinning around and I just kind of came through," Rudd said. "The waters just sort of parted for us and it was just luck. It wasn't that we did anything different [Sunday]."

Much of Rudd and the team's problems this season stem from having poor qualifying efforts. "We qualify poorly, and you ask why," he said. "Well, we work on race setup. When you're a single-car operation, we don't get the test days like the multi-car teams do, so we roll into the track and have to take advantage of the track time.

"These other guys, if they didn't test, one of their four or five cars did test. So we sacrifice qualifying on purpose and now by being in the top 35 that will allow us to continue to do that. But because of that, when we wrecked on lap five and six, you don't know how good the car is because these people never get a chance to see it run."

A broken part at Atlanta ended a promising run, and crashes in the other races have made the first five races a stretch to forget for Rudd, but he's been at this a long time. "You just put it behind you and just don't think about it and run your own program and that's what we did [Sunday]," he said.

"We might have risked a few more things had we not been in this predicament. I think we had a little bit better car than what we finished, but it didn't work out. We probably had a third-place car and we finished seventh or something."

The finish puts Rudd 34th in the point standings heading to Texas, which means he has a guaranteed starting spot next week. "It doesn't sound like a big accomplishment but it is because it frees up the opportunity to go work on race setup," he said.