THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 23, 1994 TAG: 9409230701
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STAN CREEKMORE, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE, VA. LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
There was a time when Langley Raceway's best drivers conducted driving clinics when the Late Model Stocks visited Martinsville. That time has passed.
Just a single driver who runs at the Hampton track, Danny Edwards, qualified in the top twenty and none of Langley's warriors came even close to matching the effort of pole winner Johnny Rumley for Saturday's Late Model event at Martinsville Speedway.
``We were a little faster in practice but everybody was,'' said Edwards, a two-time Late Model champion at Langley Raceway. ``We were trying to run a field.
Phil Warren, this season's Langley Late Model Champion, turned the 31st-fastest time after driving into the third turn ``five car lengths too deep. I guess I just got too greedy,'' Warren said.
Joe Gaita, a semi-regular at Langley, lost one of his two qualifying laps when his team failed to get through inspection. Any team who missed their spot in the qualifying order was penalized one lap.
Rumley, from Winston Salem, N.C., bested Edwards and eighty three other drivers to win the pole for the race Saturday at 2 p.m.
Barry Beggarly, of Pelham, Va., will start outside after missing the top spot by less that two-hundredths of a second.
The event is run in two 100-lap segments with a 10-minute stop in-between the two segments. During the break, crews will be allowed to change two tires and perform other work on the car that they might otherwise do in the course of a normal pit stop.
Practice was cut short by a lingering mist that kept the cars off the track until 11:30, three hours later than scheduled.
Busch Grand National qualifying is set for 3 p.m. today. There also will be two 25-lap heat races to fill out the field for the Late Model race, as well as qualifying for the top 20 positions in the Winston Cup Goody's 500.
Rusty Wallace, who won his seventh race of the season last week in Dover, Del., has two victories and two runner-up finishes in the last four Winston Cup races on the flat, egg-shaped .526-mile oval. by CNB