Bristol’s Ride…The No. 22 Bill Davis Racing team plans to utilize chassis No. 11 for the Sharpie 500 this weekend at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. This is the same car the team utilized for the races earlier this season at Texas Motor Speedway, California Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Blaney’s Career Stats…Dave Blaney will make his 291st career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start when the green flag waves Saturday evening. He made his first career Cup Series start in October 1992 at [Rockingham] North Carolina Speedway and finished 35th in his first Cup Series start in Bristol in 2000. Like this weekend, Blaney was aboard a Bill Davis Racing-owned machine.
Blaney at Bristol…Blaney has made 15 Cup Series starts at .533-mile track during his career. The veteran driver has started as high as second (2005) and has five top-10 qualifying efforts to his credit. He has finished as high as 14th (2006).
BDR at BMS…Competitors driving Bill Davis Racing-owned cars have been racing at Bristol Motor Speedway since 1993 and have made 43 starts. Those drivers have posted two top-five finishes and seven top-10 finishes.
More Dirt Tracking…Blaney will spend Tuesday evening at Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, Pa., for the third and final event in the Ollie’s 360 Challenge. Blaney, along with Kasey Kahne and Tony Stewart, will race against the region’s top 360/358 drivers.
Gateway Bound…The No. 22 Bill Davis Racing team plans to spend two days testing at Gateway International Raceway in St. Louis, Mo., next week before heading to California. The team spent several days testing at that facility last week as well.
Blaney’s Thoughts on the Sharpie 500…“It’s really important for us to get through the weekend without any problems. It’s been a tough couple of weeks for this Caterpillar Racing team, and two DNFs in a row have really hurt us in the points. We’ve lost the cushion we had between us and the 36th place team, and the last thing we want to do is get into trouble again this weekend and find ourselves on the outside looking in. We just don’t want to have to go through that again, and we certainly feel like we’re better than that as a race team. Bristol is a tough place to have to go and know that you have to have a clean race, but we’ll start by trying to get in a good qualifying run and go from there. It’s short track racing and anything can happen, but the farther towards the front you start, obviously, the less catching up you have to do during the race.”
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