NASCAR WCUP: Good race result starts on Friday for Michael Waltrip
1 October 1999
HARRISBURG, N.C. (Sept. 30, 1999) - When Philips Chevrolet driver Michael
Waltrip lines up for qualifying at Martinsville Speedway on Friday, track
position for Sunday's NASCAR Winston Cup race will be the top priority. If
you don't have track position at the start of Sunday's 500-lap race, you
have to work all afternoon to get it - all the while hoping you can avoid
trouble among the bumper-to-bumper grind that defines Martinsville.
Michael Waltrip at Martinsville (career)...
Starts: 27
Top 5s: 0
Top 10s: 4
Top 15s: 9
Ave. start: 20.22
Ave. finish: 19.70
Winnings: $335,767
Best start: 7th ('88, '90, '94)
Best finish: 7th ('91)
1999 (race 1): 39th
Michael Waltrip on...
...the importance of a good qualifying run at Martinsville:
"You can't ignore the fact that getting a good starting spot on Friday is
something that will pay off on Sunday. That's just a fact. But, it can't
stop there. You don't want to hang everything on Friday. Sunday is when it
really counts. But, qualifying well definitely assists you on Sunday, so
that will be the focus of everybody there. Last week at Dover, we were down
a lap early strictly based on our qualifying performance on Friday. Putting
the Philips Chevy somewhere in the top 20 this Friday is definitely what
we'll be shooting for."
...his outlook for this weekend:
"We actually had a great run up there in the spring, even though our 39th
place finish didn't speak to that. All day long we were really good, but we
just had an unfortunate situation with an oil line where we had to stop for
20 laps and fix it. We can know we had a decent run up there in the spring,
and then on top of that, we can add the other things we've learned on the
short, flat tracks since then. We're going to race the same car we ran at
Richmond, which is a car we built specifically for these racetracks with the
hope we could develop some things into it that would pay off for us. I
believe we've done that."