Jeff Purvis continues is strong presence at Daytona during Speedweeks '96.
He set some of the fastest times during winter testing and has been backing them with results this week. He won the ARCA 200 Saturday, he qualified for the Daytona 500 14th overall with a good time of 187.711 and starts the second Twin-125 race Thursday alongside Kenny Schrader on the third row.
With his pole position for the Goody's 300 he has a good start on his claim to win all three races he is entered in this week. His team is made up of 6 crew members that have been working on all three cars - a job that keeps them running from one end of the DIS garage to the other as one practice or qualifying session ends and another begins.
They need an award named after them.
The only drawback to all of this success is that his efforts this month have not been able to draw out a sponsor to assist with much needed funding. It would be a real surpise if he didn't acquire sponsorship prior to the Goody's 300 Saturday (Tape delay on ESPN at 8:30 pm)
Purvis commneted on his qualifying effort. "This team works hard on restrictor plate races. We started when we ran ARCA races. Ron Hutter built the engine for the car and every time we unload it, it gets better and better. We came down here and practiced, and it ran real fast in practice. We sent it back to him and it came back with more horsepower. Our team is unsponsored and we keep working like we ve got ten million dollars. This car was really fast at Talladega, and I didn't really expect to go this fast. I was really surprised how fast Joe Nemechek went. I knew he had run fast. but I thought maybe he was in the draft. He ended up with a pretty fast lap, and I didn't think I could beat that."
"One thing about not having a sponsor. You can run the ones (races) you want to. Without a sponsor, we re going to run the whole Busch Series. We'd like to have a sponsor on our Cup car and show what we re capable of there, but it costs a lot to do that and we're not willing to spend our money every race to run all the Cup races. Right now what we're looking at is the Busch races and a limited amount of Cup races. They sold all my short track cars and they sold off all my ARCA cars. They sold off the one I won with on Sunday. That basically took us out of the market on those.
"I wish they'd let me run this car in Winston Cup. It does surprise me. Our Cup car was real fast, and we came back and knew our Busch car was going to be faster than our Cup car but we didn't know it was going to be faster than everybody's Cup car.
"I came down here with a lot of confidence after seeing some of the numbers we ran in testing. We got the ARCA race under our belt and everybody was boosted from that. I'm a little bit surprised to get this much start on the year. This is one of our favorite tracks. We don't have but about six people working at the shop and they're spread between the ARCA car and Busch car Cup car. We've got some people who come in on the weekend and help us. We've got a very limited crew, but we don't have a lot of people in the way.
"When you've got a fast race car it seems like you're going slow. The car was real comfortable. It drove real good all the way around the race track. It didn't bottom out. It's really driving good. I'm looking forward to driving this race car.
"We're really excited about running the Busch races. We haven't won any of them. We're going to be competitive anyway. I hope we can go out there and win some of these races, anyway. I'd love to win this one. This would be a good one to start with. Several people are talking about two or three cars breaking away Saturday, but I don't see that. I'd love to see it. I'd love to be one of the three or four who break away. When this draft starts, they'll suck you right back to `em. This is going to be a tough race."
