---

NASCAR-WCUP: Six Teams Testing at Martinsville

1 April 1999

Testing at Martinsville Speedway for the Goodys Body Pain 500 on Sunday, April 18 Testing today: John Andretti, 43 STP Pontiac; Elliott Sadler, 21 Citgo Ford; Kenny Irwin, Jr., 28 Texaco/Havoline Ford; Derrike Cope, 30 Jimmy Dean\State Fair\Bryan\Rudys Farm Pontiac; Geoffrey Bodine, 60 PowerTeam Chevrolet; Buckshot Jones, Crown Fiber Communications Pontiac. Everyone except Kenny Irwin is expected back tomorrow. I will send a story later today.

A group of kids from Westover Christian Academy in Danville were watching testing today and all of the drivers went to the fence during lunch and signed autographs.

John Andretti-
How is the car today? "Last year we didnt test here and had an awfully good car and I think we are going to have good race cars here no matter what. This is a good place to test to try a lot of different things."

Andretti led 59 laps in last springs Goodys Headache Powder 500. Andretti, who was challenging the eventual winner Bobby Hamilton when he took the lead for good on the 438th lap, finished 18th after running out of gas.

You had a great run here last year, but some bad luck kept you out of Victory Lane. "Ive got a great team here, and I think we have the opportunity to win races. When one gets away, thats one to many. We are hoping in 99 we can make up for what we missed in 98."

Geoffrey Bodine-
How do you feel about the next to weeks with Bristol and Martinsville? "These next couple of races are tough ones no doubt about it. A lot of things can happen good and bad, and hopefully it will be good for us. I love it here at Martinsville. You know this is one of my favorite tracks. I have a lot of history here with Modified, Busch Grand National and Winston Cup so I always love to come here and that is why we are here testing. We want to run good here."

You have had a lot of success in several divisions here, is there a secret to getting around here good? "Nah, theres no secret. Yeah though I guess there is a secret. You have to have a good team. No matter where you go that is the number one ingredient to success is the team. Team means people, how they put the car together, how they put the engine together. Thats the secret here you have to have a good engine and a good handling car."

Derrike Cope- (Cope is 41st in the Winston Cup points standings)
How are you feeling about your season so far? Do you think you are about to turn it around? "Well I hope so. I think Texas was a good indicator for us. We made some changes there after we struggled early in the season. We ran good at Daytona and then struggled after that. We are optimistic we can turn it around. We ran good at Texas. I think our game plan is to just put some 100 point weekends together and finish in the top 20 and then try to get to the front. I think some good races tracks are coming up for me."

What about the next two races? "These race tracks (Bristol and Martinsville) you cant come in here and dictate anything. You have to be careful to get a good finish. You cant really get out of harms way and if you are off a tick the front is going to be coming to you. I think there is a lot of animosity after those races.

This place is hard on brakes. How do you plan to handle that? Thats what this test is about. We have a couple of engineers here trying to work on what the brakes are doing, how long I am on the brakes and trying to minimize that. The computers can tell us how long and how hard Im on the brakes and then we can figure out ways to minimize that."

Kenny Irwin, Jr.-
You are getting some good times. Are you pretty happy with the car? "We are figuring a lot of stuff out last night and hopefully we are getting a good handle on what it takes to run good for 500 laps. We did qualifying setup yesterday and were pretty good so we felt like we were more behind on race setup so thats what we have been doing today."

Do you think you have a setup to keep a good race pace now? "Well I think the race pace will be a 20.70 (seconds) or 20.60s. Hopefully it wont be too much faster than that because that is about as fast as we can run. That is about where we saw Jeremy (Mayfield) yesterday and he was very fast. That was the mark we were hitting for when we came here."

You have run three races here at Martinsville. Are you getting pretty comfortable with it now? "No. This is a tough race track. I mean this is very tough. Its flat and its very much a setup race track. You have to have a very good setup. At Atlanta or Texas, if you can drive it fast and hard and hold your breath you can turn a good lap. Here it doesnt matter. You just have to have a good car to get around here. So the driver has to give good feedback. I think we are kind of coming around to that on this test. I am figuring out what the car actually needs and I think that is one reason we are getting fast."

Buckshot Jones- (Rookie and his is 43rd in the Winston Cup Points standings. He has missed two races this season) Im sure you were hoping your season would go a little better than it has. Talk about how you may have adjusted your goals or plans and how you cope with your season? "We didnt think Winston Cup was going to be as tough as it is. We knew it was going to be tough. We have found out some of our problems. We had problems with our chassis at Daytona and Vegas. That was something you didnt expect and it kind of put us behind the eight ball. Thats why we came here to Martinsville. Martinsville is always a tough track. We are improving a little bit each time out, and we are learning a lot but its a lot tougher than we expected."

Have your problems just been mechanical? "Its been mechanical, but its also all of us learning. There were things in Busch racing that werent real important, but in Winston Cup its different. In Winston Cup, if you are off just a little bit you are loading up and going home. Its a race just to get in the race. With qualifying you really have to do two races. There has been a big learning curve for me and the team. We learn something new each time out and we are just going to have to stick it out. Its going to be a tough year."

Elliott Sadler- (He is in his second test here in as many weeks. He tested on Monday and Tuesday of last week too.)
Why did you decide to use two test dates here at Martinsville? "Because this is a new type of car that we havent run before. We just wanted to get all the data we could with it. We are going to carry this car to Phoenix, New Hampshire, Richmond and some other places. So since we had some background here and some data here, we decided to come back here so we could baseline here as much as we could. We were suppose to be in Richmond this week, but we felt we would learn more if we came back here and baseline the same stuff again.

You were pretty happy with the car when you left here last week? "Yeah, we were pretty fast last week, and we are pretty good here again today. We have a lot of laps on the tires and we are getting the car more comfortable. We are trying some qualifying runs this afternoon. We have learned more and more with it here and thats the main thing. We need to find stuff we can use at the other tracks."

Editors Note: To view hundreds of hot photos and racing art, please visit The Racing Image Galleries and The Visions of Speed Art Gallery
.