Stremme gets speed he's looking for in Happy Hour

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Bristol is a difficult track to win from the back of the field. Seventy-eight percent of the winners at Bristol Motor Speedway have started the race inside the top 10. But David Stremme, who will start Sunday's Food City 500 in the 33rd position, was smiling after Happy Hour.

"We've just been really working with the car and I feel we got it running pretty good," Stremme said of the No. 40 Dodge. "The track is rubbering up -- it's really hot -- and I was real happy with the Energizer car."

And he has reason to be excited with the ninth-fastest Happy Hour speed of 120.839 mph.

After a difficult rookie season which saw the driver average a finish of 26.4 and in a constant battle to stay in the top 35 in owner points, ultimately finishing the season in 33rd, 2007 has gotten off to a monstrous start.

Coming into Bristol, Stremme was the only driver to average a starting position inside the top 10. With four consecutive top-20 finishes, Stremme finds himself 11th in points, just 166 behind leader Mark Martin.

But Bristol isn't one of Stremme's best tracks, with finishes of 36th and 35th last season. After the first couple of practices and a tough qualifying run -- which found the car off the pace -- frustration could have reared in the No. 40 pit box. Instead, Stremme says the team went to work and he thinks they have finally found the right setup.

"We've had to change our setup since we tested here. We broke an arm like 15 laps into practice [Friday] and it really killed us," Stremme said. "My car was so off [Saturday] morning and the guys did a really good job and made some really good gains on it so I'm real happy with it."

Stremme's Dodge has definitely had its problems in the early practice sessions. In Friday's practice, he found himself 28th with a speed of 122.162. It got worse on Saturday morning as Stremme finished with the 37th-fastest time at 120.339.

"We broke a track bar mount [Saturday morning], we broke a lower control arm [Friday], it's been crazy so far with what's going on," Stremme said. "It's just learning the car and the different setups and some guys are hitting it really early and some of us are getting it later so maybe [Sunday] we'll have a good day."

Saturday afternoon's ninth-fastest lap in Happy Hour erased all of the earlier problems for Stremme. He was a little more than a tenth-of-a-second off of Tony Stewart's leading lap of 121.597. Stewart's teammate Denny Hamlin was second-quickest at 121.528 and Kasey Kahne was third with a speed of 121.489 mph.

There was some concern with the Car of Tomorrow and the Bristol track, that there would be some accidents during practice. But aside from a few scrapes against the wall, the practices were clean and the caution never came out.

For Stremme, it's all about keeping his strong 2007 start going. And that means breaking his cold streak at the .533-mile Bristol Motor Speedway track.

"We just got to be careful and survive [starting Sunday in the rear], that's going to be the big thing."