NASCAR WCUP: Ward Burton plans patience for Martinsville this weekend
Posted By Terry CallahanMotorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
April 6, 2001
“Martinsville is a race of patience. You have to be very patient for the entire race or you’ll have a pretty tough day. You need to protect the bottom of the race track, keep your brakes and have a good handling race car through the turns and it can be a real good day at Martinsville. We hope it’s a real good day for the CAT car.” - Ward Burton, driver of the Caterpillar Dodge
MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY VIRGINIA 500
BURTON ON MARTINSVILLE…
“First, we’ve got to have a good qualifying lap because track position is key. You certainly don’t want to have to battle your way through the field. It’s a chore to get by some cars, especially at Martinsville. You really need to pass on the bottom, so it is important to get your car handling so that it can stick to the bottom of the race track. Once you do those two things, then you have to make sure you have brakes at the end of the 500 laps. You have to be on top of your game at Martinsville because it is difficult to get everything working perfectly. We’ll concentrate on getting through the turns. The better you can enter the turns, the faster you can get back on the gas and get off the turns. The guy who gets their car doing that the best will be the guy who has a legitimate shot at winning.
BALDWIN ON TEST AT LAKELAND…
“We sent our newly assembled test team to Lakeland, Fla., last week. We had Tom Hubert shake down the car that we are racing this weekend. It is the same chassis that ran both Martinsville races last year. They had one solid day of testing and then it was cut short from rain, so we didn’t get to try everything that we wanted to, but we feel we learned enough to apply some things this weekend. I hope it is valuable information and that the test team works for us because that could cut down on some of the burnout in crew members you’re seeing. That is what it was designed for - to prevent the road crew from having to go to all the races and all the tests too.”
BALDWIN ON TEXAS…
“We had a decent car last weekend, but what we didn’t have was track position. Although we were off a little on the set-up, we did get the car working better. Ward was turning lap times as fast as the leader at one point, we just didn’t have the track position to get anywhere. I hope we can get the CAT car working well and up front this weekend at Martinsville.”
Text provided by H K Stoddard
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