Car Notes

Nextel Cup Primary Car: Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chassis # 31/ Back up Car #14
Last Raced: Talladega Superspeedway (October 2006) Qualified 24th – Finished 34th – Tony Eury Sr. called for minor updates to the body of car #31 prior to this weekend’s race.  
Fun Fact: Crew Chief Tony Eury Sr. and the Menards Racing team built a brand new superspeedway car last month. But upon testing the new car in the wind tunnel, Eury found that the body wasn’t up to his liking and so choose to run what was scheduled to be this weekend’s back up car, as the primary Talladega entry.
 
Overview
Menards Racing plans to continue the budding momentum at Talladega  Superspeedway. After Menard’s 15th place finish at Texas Motor Speedway two weeks ago, the team qualified for it’s first COT race of the season last weekend at Phoenix. Hard work by the entire team resulted in a 25th place finish and top Raybestos Rookie honors for Menard in that event and provide the perfect segue for the superspeedway powerhouse organization into Talladega race weekend.  Menard and the members of the No. 15 team turn their attention to this weekend’s Aaron’s 499 with the confidence that stems from past success at this particular race track.
 
Superspeedway Powerhouse DEI
Not only did Menard lead the way through Daytona pre season testing by recording the fastest lap time in the draft, but he also drives for an organization that is widely regarded as the dominant group in superspeedway competition. Dale Earnhardt Inc. has a combined 10 Cup and Busch wins at Talladega Superspeedway.

Working Towards Top-35
The No. 15 team sits 40th in Nextel Cup Owner’s Standings, only 97 points outside of the top-35.  In the past two race weekend’s Menard has closed that gap 29 points from 126 points proving the No. 15 team is slowly but surely movin’ on up!  

Raybestos Rookie of the Year Notes
The late Davey Allison is the only Raybestos® Rookie to win the Aaron’s 499 at Talladega. He won the 1987 event by .78 seconds over Terry Labonte.  Allison also led the most laps in the race, holding the top spot six times for 108 of the 178 laps (the event was shortened by 10 laps due to darkness).  Menard stands third in overall Raybestos Rookie ratings.  He has 54 points, 36 points behind Juan Pablo Montoya who leads the battle with 90 points.  

Tops at Talladega
Menard’s personal resume fits well in the fold with the superspeedway elite at Dale Earnhardt Inc. Menard went to Victory Lane at Talladega in 2003, after scoring a win in the ARCA race.  Menard further endured himself to the superspeedway Gods when he won theBusch Pole Award at Talladega in 2005. In 2006, Menard qualified for the October Nextel Cup event at Talladega and ran up front for a good portion of the day, even managing to lead lap 154.  While Menard was involved in a crash on lap 173, he remains positive about the team’s potential for success in this weekend’s Aaron’s 499.

TALLADEGA Quotes
 
Paul Menard Quote on the Aaron’s 499 :
“We’re focused on speed at Talladega. Daytona is a downforce track, it’s a racing track and Talladega is pure speed, especially since they resurfaced it.  Just get all the dragout of the car and if we take away front downforce because of that then so be it.  As long as we get a slipperier race car that’s what we’ve been trying to do. This is the same car we ran last fall at Talladega and we ran pretty good with it.  We got caught up in a wreck and replaced the nose and a side on it and had it back to the wind tunnel.  It’s kind of back to normal. Superspeedways are all about momentum if you have to get out of the gas for anything then it just kills your momentum. That’s kind of the key, just stay in the throttle stay off the brake. Racing, you have a lot more room at Talladega than Daytona and you can hold it wide open no problem for a fuel run where at Daytona you’ve got to start breathing it and actually start driving the racecar. I’d say the draft with the Cup cars is less intense than the Busch cars actually.  The talent is a lot better on the Cup side. The talent on the Busch side is awesome.  It’s probably the best it’s ever been but, still, they don’t have the experience that these Cup guys do.  You’re always kind of waiting for somebody to make a mistake or something big to happen where you have a lot more comfort just being around all the Cup regulars.  

Nextel Cup Car Chief “B” Hoover on the Aaron’s 499 :
“We’re going into qualifying with our car in impound trim because if we put it in full fledge qualifying trim we’d have a lot of problems early in the race.  If it seems like we’re on the bubble in practice, we may do a few things to up our qualifying potential, but if it looks like we’re safe, we’re going to focus on getting our car in solid race trim. Once the green flag drops, Paul needs to race it a little harder and a little smarter simply because we need to be thinking about the points situation. We need to miss the Big One and we really need to make it to the end.  Ideally we need to come away with a top-15.”