NASCAR Cup

Darlington Dave Marcis notes

Our qualifying efforts are still not up to par. We unloaded the car and made gains on it all day in practice. I ran a 29.12 in practice and thought we would be alright in qualifying. Instead I ran a 29.25. I guess I ran into 1 too hard and pinched ...

Edited: May 8, 2001, 12:19 PM

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Our qualifying efforts are still not up to par. We unloaded the car and made gains on it all day in practice. I ran a 29.12 in practice and thought we would be alright in qualifying. Instead I ran a 29.25. I guess I ran into 1 too hard and pinched the corner. I think the track was 2-3 tenths slower in second round but I ran a 29.05. I didn't do anything to the car but I just got a better lap.

I was having trouble with the car in the last practice and decided to change everything Saturday night. Luckily I had a very good driving race car on Sunday. That first caution caught us like it did a lot of people. I came out of the pits and the caution flew. Thats just the way it goes sometimes. We left a lug off the right front and I had to come back in under caution. That did't hurt too bad but it did in terms of track position. As far as the rest of the day it wasn't too bad and it wasn't too good, it just was.

We were trying to make it to the finish on tires because we were okay on fuel. Near the end of the race my tires were gone so I got out of rhythm and Darlington isn't the place to do that. With about 8 laps to go I went into turn one too hard and too high and brushed the wall. I had to come in and change right sides and that was that.

I would have finished about 18th if I hadn't hit the wall but instead we finished 23rd. Now we are 24th in the points. For this week at Bristol, we have beat out the side of the Darlington car and are going to take it to Bristol. It should be a good car there and it is probably going to get tore up more anyway at that place. The field is going to be tight taking 32 +4 cars.

The show car is going to be at a Prodigy billing center on Friday then somewhere near the track on Saturday. I know that the T-shirts just came in today and the hats will be here this weekend. The postcards are being printed so they should be out soon. I will keep you posted.

Thanks, Dave #71

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