DATE: Sunday, April 20, 1997                TAG: 9704200179

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C10  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE                      LENGTH:   75 lines

CRAVEN READY FOR MARTINSVILLE; WALLACE BROTHERS HOPE TO DUEL

Spring finally returned here Saturday afternoon, but it was still nippy enough that Ricky Craven wore a ``Maine Hockey'' sweat shirt after the final round of Winston Cup practice at Martinsville Speedway.

As he stood at the end of his team's transporter, hands jammed in his jeans pockets, Craven displayed no outward sign of the broken shoulder blade or the two broken ribs he suffered in a crash during practice at Texas Motor Speedway 18 days ago.

But after at least 50 laps in the final practice, he felt it. ``I've got quite a bit of pain in my right shoulder right now, so I don't know how that will be,'' he said. ``I've only been making two-lap runs until this afternoon.''

Craven, however, will not be deterred. He intends to run all 500 laps - 263 miles - of today's Goody's 500. He has no plans for a relief driver.

``I'm going to try to go all the way,'' Craven said. ``I feel I can do it. I'll see how I feel in the morning. That will tell me a lot.

``It's not going to be painless, but that wasn't a concern when I decided to do this,'' he continued. ``I knew it would come with some discomfort. But Martinsville is a race track that I've always enjoyed and I've always run well at.

``And it will be a test for me. I think if I can run 500 laps here, I'm ready to come to work full time. The pain - it's like last year. I raced in pain for several months.''

The Goody's 500 will be a test for all 42 drivers in the field, as Bristol was a test last week. Many drivers are destined to fail.

Craven thinks being somewhat lame might actually be to his benefit.

``I think if I do drive different, it would be for the good,'' he said. ``If I drive a little bit conservative, that will pay off as far as saving the brakes and saving the car, because you can wear one out here.

``I'm going to run as hard as the car will run and back off a little bit only because that's the smart way to race here anyway.''

Craven certainly wasn't lame in Saturday's final practice. He was eighth-fastest, reaching 92.335 mph in his No. 25 Budweiser Chevrolet. He qualified 35th on Friday, however, and will have to pit on the backstretch.

Kenny Wallace will lead the field to the green flag at 1 p.m. after winning the first pole of his Winston Cup career Friday.

``I just didn't realize how big this was,'' he told Ford's Jeff Owens Saturday. ``I've always made fun of qualifying in Winston Cup because everyone makes such a huge deal out of it. But I guess I forget sometimes that this is the biggest stock-car sport in the world.

``It's been like a whirlwind,'' he said. ``It just blew me away beyond belief. When I won those races in the Grand National series, there were probably six to 10 people around. Here, there are hundreds. And my media guy, Steve Post, brings me not one newspaper this morning, but we were in newspapers all across the United States.''

Still, the favorite today will be his big brother, Rusty, who will be going for a record fifth consecutive Goody's 500.

``It would be exciting if me and Kenny can race each other,'' Rusty said. But to hear Rusty talk, don't bet against him.

``The car is excellent,'' he said. ``We've been working on some shock absorber development, and we hit on something a little while ago that is the best that I've ever had here, so I'm real excited about it. I made some long runs and we hauled, so I'm real excited, very confident.''

Actually, Jeff Gordon, who won the spring race at Bristol last weekend for the third year in a row, has a better recent short-track record than Wallace.

In the past 18 short-track races, Gordon has won six, with 14 top five finishes and an average finish of 4.55. Wallace has five victories, 12 top fives and an average finish of 7.72.

At a short track, ``just about anything goes,'' Gordon said. ``It's one thing to go in there and just flat-out wreck the guy. It's another thing to get in there and bang and rub and bump and grind toward the checkered.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Kenny Wallace, left, will start from the pole, but brother Rusty is

the favorite to be out front in the end.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu