NASCAR BGN: Fedewa enjoys 'welcome atmosphere' of Nashville

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

April 10, 2001

"Nashville is always a fun place to visit. It's a little like racing in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. There are a lot of things to do there besides racing. It's a nice place to go and the people are always very welcoming of the race teams."-- Tim Fedewa, driver of the Phillips 66 Chevrolet

Tim Fedewa's Thoughts on Nashville . . . "I don't really know a lot about the new track other than what people have told me. I know that it's a mile and a quarter and that it's supposed to be a little like Las Vegas. I hear there was a bump in it which they were trying to work out. It's a concrete track which makes it a little different than most places we race. I'm glad we have a whole day to practice and test some things out. It will probably be like when we went back to Dover after they had made the surface concrete. We may have a few problems getting some rubber down on the track and trying to develop a racing groove. We'll have a day to work the bugs out, and pretty much everybody is starting from scratch on the track."

Crew Chief Donnie Richeson On Nashville . . . "The new Nashville track looks a lot like Las Vegas. It has 14 degree banking like Vegas, it's just a little smaller. It's only a 1.3-mile tri-oval. It's a concrete track which is one of the things that will be a question mark for us. Kevin Harvick is the only guy that tested there, and it was a tire test for Goodyear. We're all going in blind. We plan to take our Las Vegas information and work from that. The Thursday open practice sessions will be pretty important for everybody."

Equipment . . . "Gambler" is the car Fedewa will compete with this weekend in the "Pepsi 300" at Nashville Superspeedway. "Gambler" made its debut at Las Vegas in 2000 where the Phillips 66 team finished fourth. "Gambler's" had a bit of a facelift since running Las Vegas earlier this season.

"We changed the nose on the car," Richeson explained. "We changed it from a drop-snout to make it a standard car to see how that works for us in Nashville."

Text provided by Penny Copen

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