NASCAR WCUP: Rusty Wallace Quotes from Winston Preview
10 January 2001
Posted By Terry
Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
RUSTY WALLACE (No. 2) Miller Lite
2000 was a great year, is 2001 shaping up to be a run for another Winston Cup title?
Yes, last year was a great year with four wins, nine poles, if I could go into 2001 as last year, I'd be a happy camper. For next year, all I can tell you is we have as much chance to win as any of those guys out there, we have a lot reason for it, we've assembled some new guys for the pit crew, new guys in pit and the pit should be an instant. Week in and week out, time to start practicing, the horsepower and engines, everybody knows we had unbelievable horsepower last year. They made it stronger, more reliable this year. Drivers have been in the win tunnel like crazy working on the Daytona cars and we feel like we had a good Daytona practice. And we will find out Tuesday night when it's all done. But there are lots of reasons why we should be better. And if we can continue with what we had last year, we should have a helluva team this year.
Earnhardt was better last year, you were better last year, could we see a points race kinda of like the good old days between the two?
I hope we do, I think we could. I was strong last year. He was strong last year. I feel like I'm just getting better, feel more confident, organized, doing a lot of neat things, during off seaso. I'm working with a lot of new companies, going across the street looking at the race team guys. They are on fire, some of them have got a bug up their ass to keep them going hard, but they are grinding it, they came by the race shop the other day, all wanting to get t-shirts made up with all these slogans on them. I told them, calm down, don't get too cocky on me right now. We want to win the title but don't sink before we get to Daytona with all this confidence, but I feel good about it right now.. We feel really good about it with all this enthusiasm and plus the way we left off last year.
Rusty, in '89 you won the championship Basically every year since, you've won a ton of races, won a bunch of laps, yet the second title has never been there. How much does that bother you, how much does that drive you to this day?
Well it bothers me, I haven't won a title since '89, but there are a lot of things that can bug you. Also the last three Daytona 500's in a row, I was in a position to win all three of those and finish in the top five of those the last three years, could have won the Firecracker a couple of times. Lead a ton of laps, lead the most laps in the 500 the year before. And the 500 has been really good to me the last three years is what I'm trying to say. I felt like I threw the Brickyard 400 away in '95, and doggone it thought I had it this year and Labonte passed me with 12 laps to go and I lost that one. The big races I want to win, no doubt I want to win the Winston Cup championship. But in my eyes, if you don't win the championship, then for sure you want to win the most races because they never talk about the guys who finish second, third, fourth and on back. It's either the guy who wins the most races or the guy who wins the championship. And so as long as I can keep that going, I'm happy with the winning streak I think I've got the longest winningest streak in NASCAR history right now continuous years running. I might be wrong, but I don't think I am With 15 of 16 years straight of winning, and hell, I might make a t-shirt that says that.
Rusty, you have a new broadcast partner in NASCAR that going to be on FOX now, and as an entire audience that hasn't tuned in before that have watched football, basketball and baseball, with a quick primer, why should people start and what will people get out of watching NASCAR who haven't been fans before?
Well, first of all, if you've never been to a race, I don't think I've ever sent a person to a race before that they never came back totally excited. The NASCAR thing is not a hard sell, if you take a person to a race, it's incredible what enthusiasm they have when they leave. Now, if they don't know anything about NASCAR, it because they haven't seen it before. And I'm positive when they see NASCAR, they are going to be glued to their TV every Sunday. I guarantee they will be talking about it at their work place from Monday to Friday saying did you see that move, did you see that pit stop. What about that Wallace or that Earnhardt or whatever? That type of talk will happen. Some of the sponsors I've signed up, Mead Paper Co, one of the biggest paper companies in the world. I went to one of their plants last year, they had about 35 forklifts and every single forklift was painted up with #2 Rusty Wallace in it. So these people really get excited about it. And what the networks right, and once they bring the sport to them, it's not going to be a hard sell. We just hope the media does a real good job of covering it, excitingly and covering all the details and I think you guys are going to have one hell of a time next year. I am looking forward to it.
Text Provided By Marie Mason
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