Avondale, Arizona — Both Winston Cup practice sessions at Phoenix International Raceway featured a Top-10 peppered with the Blue Oval. While neither session featured a Ford Taurus as fastest, many in the garage are confident that Sunday will be a decent race for those who are Ford oriented.

In the morning session the fastest Ford was that of Rusty Wallace. Wallace is wound fairly tight now that his magic number matches that of his car number — 2. That’s the number of races left for Wallace to snag a win to extend his string to 17 consecutive years with at least one visit to Victory Lane. Wallace in now tied with Ford pilot Ricky Rudd at 16.

The second session showed Bill Davis’s Dodge fastest with Kenny Wallace behind the wheel. The fastest Ford was Ryan Newman’s pole-sitting Taurus in fourth. Dale Jarrett was fifth, championship contender Mark Martin was eighth and Dave Blaney showed 10th fastest.

Point leader Tony Stewart practiced mid twenty-something’s in the second session and fifth in the early session. This will be one of the cars to beat, unfortunately.

MARTIN’S DOINGS
There’s been some talk of Mark Martin’s extra curricular driving in 2003, which has Martin doing some NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races and Busch Grand National series races. However, no firm schedule is in place because Roush Racing needs to find the financial support for the Martin’s limited schedule.

Roush Racing’s President, Geoff Smith, told teamfordracing.com, today, that Martin wants to help with the truck entry that Kyle Busch will start driving fulltime in May of 2003. The offer for help is to run the truck in the companion Winston Cup events (gathering a few points on the truck) until Busch drives.

The BGN talk is very preliminary. Smith said that once he heard of Martin’s interest he started placing a few calls looking funding for a four, five or six race schedule for Martin. Smith, who has had two formal and one informal talks with potential sponsors seems very optimistic about finding enough money to make the deal go.

DISCOVERY SAFARI
According to NASCAR sources there will be a speedway test at Talladega Superspeedway for the Dodge and Ford teams in December. The test was arranged after the Dodge and Ford teams explained that they’re basically working with new cars and they should be entitled to see what effects the 2003 rules package changes have brought. The tentative two-day test is slated for Dec. 9 -10.

MELLING HOPEFUL
Mark Melling was in Phoenix with his NASCAR Craftsman Truck operation. The team was running in fifth in Friday’s truck race until a plug wire fell off and melted to the exhaust manifold.

Melling was a full-time Winton Cup car owner until this year when finances kept him from doing much but a widely scattered combination schedule of events.

Hoping for a better 2003 Melling told teamfordracing.com that he’s hopeful that one of his three proposals for various series entries comes together. On the table for the once long-time Ford operator is a 10-race WC schedule or a full-time BGN or NCTS deal.