Atlanta Preview Bobby Hamilton

Hamilton hoping for shorter race, another top-10 finish at Atlanta

Last November's NASCAR Winston Cup season finale at Atlanta Motor Speedway officially lasted less than three hours.

It seemed more like three days.

Bobby Hamilton, driver of the No. 4 Kodak MAX Film Chevrolet Monte Carlo, finished sixth in the rain-delayed and rain-shortened event, nailing down 10th place in the final 1998 Winston Cup standings. Because of the rain delays, the 41-year-old Tennessee native said it almost seemed like a restrictor-plate race because it took so long to complete.

"Start and stop, start and stop, start and stop," Hamilton said. "I walked out to the motorhome three times and just sat there. You'd race for 20 laps and then go out and sit and watch TV for an hour and a half. It was kind of like the 12 Hours of Atlanta. That would have been a good name for it.

"That place is weather-prone this time of year, too, but hopefully we can go down there and have some good weather. I don't care if we qualify or not because of the points deal, but I don't mind qualifying there because we always run good there.

"We unloaded good right off the bat, and we qualified 14th in November. When you can run a car around that track flat-footed and never lift for three or four laps, you've got a good car. We knew we had a good car.

"It seemed like in the daytime we were a little off, but as the nighttime fell we got better. We adjusted the car to where I think it would have been better in the daytime, too. It was just one of those deals.

"We had a couple of bad stops and went from the back to the front and every time we got to be the fastest car on the race track, they'd throw that mandatory yellow. We were killing everybody two or three tenths a lap. I don't know if we had anything for Jeff Gordon, but we were definitely a top two or three car."

Hamilton and the Kodak crew will be looking for their first top-five finish of the season in Sunday's Cracker Barrel 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Ranked 17th in the series standings after the first three races, Hamilton is coming off a disappointing 24th-place finish at Las Vegas. But he's expecting smoother sailing at Atlanta.

"The problem with Las Vegas was they wanted to carry a Gary DeHart car out there, and I didn't want to because it was my Atlanta car," Hamilton said. "What would happen if I got bumped and lost the car? If I had to pick a race for Bobby Hamilton to win, it wouldn't be Vegas. It would be Atlanta way over Vegas.

"We elected to bring an older car that we had at Richmond last year to Vegas. It was a good race car. We didn't qualify well, and we struggled with it the whole time until the end of Happy Hour on Saturday. Then we hit on a couple of things.

"We were doing OK, then we cut a tire in the race and had to pit under green. We never made up the laps, but we held on and got a decent finish. We made the best of a bad situation, and that's what you've got to do. Hopefully at Atlanta, we'll make the best of a good situation."

Team owner Larry McClure and race team coordinator DeHart have been focusing on improving the team's performance in the pits, and Hamilton says it's beginning to pay off.

"The pit crew has been working their tails off, and things have been going real good," Hamilton said. "I know Larry has been staying on them pretty hard, and they've made it hard on themselves. When they get like that, that usually makes things go a lot better. It'll just take a little time. We'll get it.

"If it hadn't been for the wreck at Daytona, we'd be in pretty good shape. We had a fifth or sixth-place car. With 30 laps to go, we took off and started going. Then we had a good day at Rockingham.

"Las Vegas sort of caught me off guard. I thought we would be better, but unless I'm really screwed up, I always think we can get a top-10 finish anywhere we go. I know we can get a real good finish at Atlanta. I just hope it doesn't take all day and most of the night to get it."