Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 30, 1995 TAG: 9506300054
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
Seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt captured the pole for Saturday's Pepsi 400, then spent much of his time denying rumors that he's trying to leave car owner Richard Childress to set up his own team.
Ricky Rudd also confirmed that he has turned down an offer to switch from Ford to Pontiac in 1996.
``Some things have been written about me being ready to start my own team,'' said Earnhardt, 44, who has driven for Childress since 1984, a span in which he has won six of his seven season championships to tie the record set by Richard Petty. ``I'm only human. If Richard Childress or I get a proposal, it only makes good business sense to listen. That's my constitutional right, I guess.
``But, no, I'm not in the market to buy a race team. I've got a race shop for my Busch Grand National car and trucks, and when I retire I'd like to be a car owner. That's no secret.''
Earnhardt stressed that he has one more year left on his deal with Childress and is negotiating a contract that would keep the successful alliance together through 1999. He said he has no interest in buying Kenny Bernstein's team, which is up for sale and currently has Hut Stricklin behind the wheel of the No. 26 Ford Thunderbird.
``I'm not trying to buy the No. 26 team,'' Earnhardt said. ``Never have been.''
Rudd, meanwhile, confirmed that he had been approached by Pontiac officials about switching car makes but had decided to remain with Ford for at least a couple more years.
``I wanted to tell the Pontiac people directly before it came out in the press,'' Rudd said. ``I don't want to slam the Pontiac people in any way, because they have a good program. But we're going to get more engineering support from Ford next year, and that's really the bottom line: making your race team the best it can possibly be.''
| ---| SURPRISING MUSGRAVE: No one is more surprised with Ted Musgrave's strong showing so far during the NASCAR Winston Cup season than ... Ted Musgrave.
Musgrave has cracked the Top 10 in 10 straight races and has finished no lower than 15th in any of the 14 events heading into the race at Daytona International Speedway. He is fourth in the Winston Cup standings with 1,935 points - only 85 behind leader Sterling Marlin.
``It's really amazing to be sitting here halfway through the season 85 points out of first,'' said Musgrave, who drives a Ford Thunderbird for Jack Roush. ``I'm not saying that we didn't expect to do well, but this is really a special deal.''
The only missing link is that first career win for Musgrave, who barely failed to lock up a starting spot during the first round of time trials Thursday but should be good enough to make the field with a speed of 189.016 mph. Musgrave keeps getting closer, though, having put together a streak in which he has finished eighth, seventh, sixth twice, fifth three races in a row and fourth the last two events.
``We've got everybody working together, and working really hard,'' Musgrave said. ``I just can't say enough good things about the guys at the shop, and Jack's got our motor program in great shape.''
Musgrave was encouraged by a couple of factors heading into the unofficial start to the second half of the season. He finished fourth in the Daytona 500 in February, and teammate Mark Martin proved the Roush Fords could win a restrictor plate race by capturing the Winston Select 500 at Talladega in April.
``We're really looking to stay out of trouble and have another great finish,'' Musgrave said.
| ---| DAYTONA USA: The speedway will break ground Friday for ``Daytona USA,'' a new attraction that promises to give fans a look at all sides of stock car racing.
The 50,000-square-foot structure, scheduled to open in the summer of 1996, will feature a 15-minute film titled ``The Daytona 500.'' It will be shown on a 50-by-24-foot screen, using in-car cameras and surround-sound audio systems to give viewers a sense of the high-speed sport.
Some of the filming was done this week, with test drivers getting behind the wheel of six top cars from the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit. There were two days of mock qualifying runs, one day for pit stop sequences, and two more days for staging side-by-side racing sequences.
Daytona USA, which will be built just outside the fourth turn of the speedway, also will have the Bluebird car which Sir Malcolm Campbell drove to a land speed record of the sands of Daytona Beach in 1937, as well as a dozen displays to recreate everything from announcing a race to celebrating in Victory Lane.
| ---| HORACE THE RACER: Horace Grant, a key player in Orlando's march to the NBA Finals, will celebrate his 29th birthday a few days early when he gives the command for drivers to start their engines in Saturday's race. Grant, whose birthday is July 4.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB