Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 25, 1994                   TAG: 9409270049
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE                                 LENGTH: Medium

DRIVERS' 1ST RULE OF RACING AT MARTINSVILLE: EASY DOES IT

When Martinsville Speedway comes to mind, one doesn't usually think of delicate driving.

But that is essentially what it takes to be quick around the tiny .526-mile oval.

``I just try to glide it in the corner,'' said Ted Musgrave, who set a track record Friday and won the pole for today's Goody's 500 at a speed of 94.129 mph. ``You try to slow yourself down more coming into the turn so you can pick up more speed coming off the corner.''

A driver's objective at Martinsville is to establish a smooth, easy rhythm. You baby the turns more than attack them. Easy is the watchword. Easy on the brakes, easy on the gas.

Except there's a hitch. In fact, there's 35 hitches - 35 other cars trying to fight for position and get past each other, testing their limits.

It's not easy to establish a rhythm in mayhem's midst, and that basic conflict is what adds spice to a race at Martinsville.

``It's almost like two races in one,'' said Musgrave. ``You run your own race more or less and then you try to race the race track and keep your car under you. It's not easy. You have to run your car hard but comfortably.''

``The harder you drive, the slower you go,'' said Jeff Burton, who starts third in today's race. ``You've got to try to drive in the corners real easy. And you can spin the wheels real easy'' coming off the turns.

Martinsville is essentially a one-groove race track, and that makes passing difficult, which leads to the fender-banging action so prevalent here.

``I've never raced anywhere like Martinsville ... ever,'' said Mark Martin, who has raced on dozens of short tracks.

``When the race track is more circular, there's a lot more opportunities to pass. But Martinsville's straightaways are so long, and the corners are so tight, and there's so narrow a groove, it's not like anywhere else. This is not my favorite kind of race track.''

For Musgrave, the best thing about starting up front at Martinsville is that it allows a driver to be less demanding of his car in the early stages of the race.

``Because of the shorter distance around this race track, you can get a lap down very easily,'' he said. ``If your car is a 10th of a second off per lap, and you start in the back, it may only take a few laps to get lapped.''

``You've got to save your brakes,'' Rusty Wallace said. ``If you've got to run hard, you run hard. But when you see me get the lead or get some ground around me, I'll be getting out of the gas real early, saving brakes. Every single chance I have to take it easy, I'll take it easy.''

``Plenty of times at Martinsville, a guy with 20 or 30 laps to go will start losing his brakes,'' said Musgrave, echoing Wallace's sentiment.

Although drivers on Hoosier tires are starting second and third - Geoff Bodine and Burton - Wallace is not impressed.

``I don't think Hoosier's got a good tire here,'' he said Saturday. ``I think they've got way too much tire stagger here and all their cars are running extremely loose. They're a lot softer. You can tell that, because the race track is really getting black.

``It's getting a lot of tire rubber caught in the cars,'' Wallace said. ``We pulled, I'll bet, 10 pounds of tire rubber off our car today already. When you get that much rubber build-up in 20 laps, it's going to be incredible what builds up in 500 laps. There's going to be rubber everywhere on the race track.''

There have been suggestions that the Hoosiers might be prone to blistering here, but Bodine disputes that. ``We don't have any tire blistering problems,'' he said. ``We tested up here [when the temperature was] in the mid-90s, and we didn't have any blistering.''

Keywords:
AUTO RACING