Long Pond, Pa. — All in all it was a blue day for the Ford effort at Pocono Raceway, today, and that is a good thing. Qualifying netted The Oval three of the top-10 spots. Giving way to the serious work at hand was the building excitement of Ricky Rudd’s 700th career start.
The commotion down at the No. 21 car hauler created by the media and well-wishing competitors was all good as the industry stopped by to pay respect to the sports undisputed “Ironman” of NASCAR Winston Cup racing, Ricky Rudd.
Rudd, who’s Cup career began back in 1975, qualified the Motorcraft Ford 27th. The run was not quite what Rudd was expecting after strong runs in the morning practice session, but an auxiliary water tank, used to keep the car cool on two taped down laps in qualifying trim, developed problems during Rudd’s timed laps.
“We were really good in practice early on, but we really didn't get a chance to run our qualifying run like we would have liked,” commented the Virginia native. “I guess we developed a hole or crack in the water storage tank you use only for qualifying. The thing was blowing water during my qualifying run, so we didn't really know what we had.”
“I'm a little disappointed,” added Rudd, “because we had a real good tunnel turn and real good front straightaway, but I couldn't get the car to stick in Turn 1 and that really killed the lap."
The car Rudd is driving this weekend is sporting different colors in a design created by Ricky’s son, Landon. The special project was done without Dad’s knowledge.
“Only about 10 people total knew about it, and that included the graphic designers needed to get the decals that Landon designed, cut,” said one party on the Wood Brothers truck. “The guys at the shop only knew the car was to be painted yellow – that’s it.”
Pulling off the father/son surprise was a huge coup as it’s frequently the diecast makers who generally run this sort of parties and they require lengthy lead time to create the collectibles.
Nailing down top-10 spots for the Ford effort were Elliott Sadler, who qualified the M&M’s Ford third; Dale Jarrett, who qualified the UPS Ford eighth; and point leader Matt Kenseth, who put his DeWalt Ford in the field in the ninth spot.
"It was the worst hour-and-a-half of my life the first hour-and-a-half of practice,” Sadler said in post-qualifying commentary. “I mean, I was like 40th on the sheet and after we qualified so good here in the first race I was about to commit suicide during practice.
“The guys worked on it and we got some help from D.J. and the 88 guys and then we made a really good qualifying run right there at the end of practice and finished sixth-quickest. We relayed that message back to him and adjusted on it a little bit more and now all of us are sitting here in the top 10.
“That's what teamwork is supposed to be about.”
