WALLACE ON ROCKINGHAM: "WE'RE READY TO ROCK AND ROLL"
-Miller Lite Team Penske Dodge Driver Confident After Test; Recalls 2003 Race As Missed Opportunity-

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. (Feb. 17, 2004) - With the heartbreak and frustration of his 2003 NASCAR season now a distant memory, Miller Lite Team Penske Dodge driver Rusty Wallace is ready for the return to the site that offered perhaps his brightest moment of the year.

"Rockingham has always been a great track for me and we were super close to adding to all the success we've had there in last February's race," Wallace said of the 1.017-mile North Carolina Speedway, where Wallace is the active statistical leader with five career wins in his 40 starts to date. "We're looking at it as a perfect opportunity to get back into Victory Lane and get this monkey off our backs.

"We had a great test there last month (Jan. 16-17) and feel as prepared as possible," said Wallace, who also has two Rockingham pole positions (in March 1989 and February 2000) to go along with his five wins entering this weekend's Subway 400. "When it was all said and done, we'd put in 500 miles of test time in both race and qualifying trim. That first Rockingham race last year was definitely a big fish that got away. We led the most laps - just dominated the thing - only to see the handling go away there at the end. Well, this time I'm confident that we'll have all the 'I's' dotted and the 'T's' crossed. We're ready to rock and roll.

"It'll be the same story as always at Rockingham - tire management," said Wallace, whose classic slip-sliding battles on the track with the late Dale Earnhardt some 15 seasons ago are now legendary. "The surface is just so abrasive there that four-tire stops are mandatory and that's always been the case. It usually comes down to who has their car handling the best on old tires at the end that wins the thing and I expect that to be the case again on Sunday. I'm confident that it can be my team that can pull it off."
Wallace started last year's Subway 400, which was his 600th career start in the big league NASCAR NEXTEL Series, in the eighth starting spot. He showed the strength of his new Miller Lite Dodge Intrepid almost immediately as he was up to fifth after 10 laps, into third on Lap 23, to second the next lap and into the lead for the first time of the day on Lap 27.
That would be the first of four occasions that Wallace would be on the point during the race. He had the lead and a 2.5-second advantage over second-place Ricky Craven on Lap 75 and radioed, "I'm gonna' throttle back here a little while and save the thing." At the time -- even while "throttled back" -- Wallace was circling the track almost two-tenths of a second faster than any other competitor.

Wallace led at the halfway point and was leading until Lap 220, when a loose handling condition began to take its toll. He fell back as far as ninth in the running order, before staging a comeback that got him back up to sixth before the laps ran out.
"I was a little let down to have had a car that good and not have been able to capitalize on it," recalled Wallace of the only race during the 2003 schedule in which he led the most laps. "That thing was a bullet. It was flying. It was handling perfect, and the motor ran great all day long. About three-quarters through the race, I could see the track turning black. I had the thing turning good, and it got too free. I could hardly touch the throttle. We made adjustments on a couple of pit stops. It tightened it up, but it lost the front end. I couldn't fix both things.
"In retrospect, I think it was a good evaluation for the first time in a Dodge on a downforce track. It had a lot of power and handled good. It was both disappointing and encouraging. It was disappointing we ran like that, but didn't win. But it was so encouraging we ran so strong in only our second race in the Dodge. There were times I'd look in the mirror and I couldn't even see the second-place car. As the day went on and the track got rubbered up, I could see it changing.
"It was a race that we dominated in and still couldn't notch another win," Wallace said of race in which he led almost half of the total laps he would lead the entire season (182 of 379). "We had a real rocket ship from the drop of the green flag and led the most laps. I guess you could say that we won two-thirds of the race, but came up short in the final third. We had a car definitely capable of winning at Rockingham last February, but we just couldn't close the deal."
Wallace's overall Rockingham career record entering this weekend's Subway 400 boasts the five wins, 12 top-five finishes, 21 top-10 finishes and two poles in 40 races.
His most recent win at Rockingham came in the spring race of 1994 and his most recent pole position came in qualifying for the spring race of 2000. Wallace's pole run for that race of 158.035 mph (23.167 seconds) remains as the track qualifying record entering this weekend's return to "the Rock."
Friday's 3:10 p.m. single round of qualifying will award all 43 starting positions for Sunday's 393-lap, 400-mile race. Saturday's action includes the final "Happy Hour" practice session from 11:10 a.m. until 11:55 a.m. Sunday's Subway 400 has a 1:00 p.m. EST starting time and features live coverage by FOX-TV and MRN Radio beginning 30 minutes earlier.