BGN: Talladega pre-race notes

• Dave Rodman
• MNI - Motorsport News International
• Sat Jul 27 00:37:22 EDT 1996

HUMMINBIRD 500K PRE-RACE NOTES

JOE NEMECHEK (No. 87 BellSouth Mobility Chevrolet) -- The BellSouth
Mobility car is running good.  We drafted a bunch during practice
and the car is driving good.  We could pass, but we also got
passed, but I think we are going to look forward to running up
front all day on Saturday.  You have to be up front to hopefully
not be in those big wrecks.  But, hopefully, everybody will use
their heads and have some common sense.  Every restrictor plate
race, when you get 40 cars running nose to tail, things can happen
that you have no control over. That's probably the hardest thing in
restrictor plate racing. I think we have a real good race car and
we are looking forward to the race.

JEFF PURVIS (No. 4 Phoenix Construction Chevrolet) -- All we can do
is give it a try -- I don't really know.  Joe's (Nemechek) car is
really fast and I hope that we will have something for him.  He was
real fast during practice today.  We are going to make a few
changes to see if we can get a little more out of it.  We're pretty
good right now so we will just have to wait and see.

DICK TRICKLE (No. 64 DURALUBE Chevrolet) -- We got to practice
drafting this morning. The No. 87 car was really good and we were
a lot faster when he was up front.  We are working on performance.
Everybody makes changes during practice, but the cars have only got
just so much.

TERRY LABONTE (No. 5 Actron Chevrolet) -- It's tough to come from
the back in my Busch car. I think the best I've qualified is 22nd
in my Busch car.  Joe's (Nemechek) car is really good -- very fast. 
Hopefully, we can work our way up in the draft and give it a run.

HUMMINBIRD 500K BUSCH BEER SECOND-ROUND QUALIFYING

RANDY LaJOIE (No. 74 FINA Chevrolet) -- We kind of made a mistake
yesterday and had the air cleaner blocked up. Hopefully, it
(starting mid-field) won't hurt us too bad. He (Nemechek) is really
running good down the straightaways, so we'll just wait and see
what we've got when we get to draft with him. You've got to have
some horsepower to go down the straightaways here and a couple of
cars have really got it together.  We will see what we can do.
Maybe we can hang with them and have some fun.

MIKE HARMON (No. 24 MedPartners Chevrolet) -- To tell you the
truth, we've been a lot faster than what we ran on Thursday -- we
were a top 10 or maybe a top 5 car. What happened was the right
rear shock messed up on us. It was holding the car up in the air
too much for us, the left rear was rubbing the quarter panel and it
just scrubbed off all of the speed. We were just dumbfounded until
we figured out what the problem was. We put new shocks on it today
and qualified good. The car should run good in the draft and we are
looking forward to the race. The cars equal out once they all get
in the draft and it will be who can get some help at the end.