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Talladega Superspeedway
Subway 300
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Location: Talladega,
AL
Shape: Tri-Oval
Distance: 2.66-miles
Banking, Turns: 33
degrees
Front Straight: 4,300
feet
Banking, Front
Straight: 18
degrees
Back Straight: 4,000
feet
Banking, Back
Straight: 2
degrees |
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Talladega Superspeedway
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I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little bit anxious about racing at Talladega. I've watched the races on TV, and seen the drivers three, four, even five wide and thought, "I'm about to do that!" Now I can take a deep breath and smile knowing that the Harrah's Racing Team finished Talladega with a 12th place result, which is our best finish of the season thus far.
I'm very proud of the team, because after qualifying 36th at Daytona, we knew we had a lot of work to do on our speedway program. The work paid off, and we qualyfied in the 17th position. This was my second race to experience speedway drafting, and I was trying to apply things I had learned at Daytona.
When the race started I was trying to be patient and let things settle down. We got shuffled a bit, and fell back early on. I tried to get in line and start climbing back towards the front. Suddenly, I saw a car spin in the middle of turns three and four, and "the big one" had started. I tried to look ahead and find a hole to drive through, but all I could see was smoke and sliding cars. The spotter told me to hold my line, and somehow we made it through the 15 car wreck. We had another close call only a few laps later when the 18 car hit the wall on the front starightaway. I had to drive way under the apron to avoid him, but we made it back on the track with no damage.
When the race was over we were in 12th, and I was able to put another superspeedway race under my belt. I was told that Darrel Waltrip commented on television that he wished he had some of the lucky Harrah's chips I was carrying in my pockets to miss all those wrecks. I'm just glad we survived our first race at Talladega, and the team has some good momentum heading out to California.
Talk to you soon,
Larry
 At Nashville in the Pepsi 300, Foyt posted 14th quick time, his best qualifying effort to date. He was headed for a top-15 finish but he got caught up in a late race multi-car accident, which forced him out of the race. He placed 29th.
Points: Foyt is currently 26th in the NASCAR Busch Series standings. He has earned $100,426 this year.
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Pre-Race Quotes:
Crew chief Jon Wolfe: "We'll run the same car we ran at Daytona, but we made some changes to the car. We wanted to try some different aero things which we think will work." [On Nashville] "We were doing pretty good right up to the end. In the beginning the car was off a little bit but we kept making changes on the pit stops and it got better as the race went on. We were able to get our lap back and when that accident happened, there were only 14 cars on the lead lap and we were one of them. Larry did a slow spin when that accident happened in front of him and we were still going to be alright until he got t-boned by somebody not paying attention and that put us out. But I thought we were headed for a possible top-10 finish."
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