USAC: Worldcom Western Midget Car Race Results, Bakersfield

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

July 23, 2001

Jeff Gordon, No. 24 Dupont Chevrolet Monte Carlo (finished 2nd): "Front downforce was definitely the key today. Being out front made the job so much easier. My car wasn't real good on short runs but it was great on long runs. We just didn't have long enough runs there. At the end, I thought maybe I could get one position on the re-start and I got a run on (Dale) Jarrett, but couldn't make the pass. Then he got underneath Ricky (Rudd) and it looked like he got loose up off of (turn) four and I tried to take advantage of that and make up as many spots as I could. This Dupont Chevrolet team came home second and we're happy with that. It's nice to get a good finish under our belt and go on."

Dale Earnhardt Jr., No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet Monte Carlo (finished 9th): "We're pretty happy. We had to come back and forth. We passed a lot of cars. We weren't quite as good as some of the guy up front. We ran laps like the leaders but we couldn't do it as consistent as them. We banged the nose up real bad and the car wouldn't really turn good after that. The lapped cars were kind of in the way. It was a good race."

(Talk about the track....was it hard to pass?) "Yeah. What happened is that the sealer tore up on top of the racetrack. It was almost un-drivable on certain parts of the track. You had to either go below it, straddle it, or go above where the racetrack was tore up. It would tear up in new places after about 100 laps. There would be another patch that would tear up and you had to kind of find it and really work around it. You really couldn't race after a while. The first 150 laps I think the track was raceable. You couldn't run on the outside at all. There were too many marbles up there. I shouldn't ever seal it again. They've had four series on this racetrack this weekend and all four of them run on that sealer and really wore it off. We were the last race. It was difficult before we even started to get around the track."

(Did the heat bother you?) "Yeah, a little bit. It kind of bothered me some - more so than normally. But it wasn't too bad. I had a big jug of water in the car and a couple of good fans working on both sides of the car."

Text provided by Nancy Wager

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