Petty will be making his 791 st Nextel Cup start this weekend. It will also mark his 53 rd start at Martinsville. Petty owns some impressive statistics at the historic track. He has captured five top-fives, 15 top-tens and one pole. His 15 top-ten finishes in 52 starts means he brings home a top-ten finish in almost one out of every three races there. Petty finished 10 th in the 2006 fall event at Martinsville .
Petty is 32 nd in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series standings heading into Martinsville .
The thoughts of #45 Dodge driver Kyle Petty heading into Martinsville:
“The Car of Tomorrow is different, but braking at Martinsville will never be. You’ve got less downforce with these cars. That will be a little bit of an issue. It will be a little bit harder on the brakes, and working the cooling out on the brakes. I think we are all taking an educated guess on brake ducts because of how the air is going to flow around the front of the splitter and around the front of the cars. I think we are all pretty confident that we can get the air there. ”
“No matter what brake package you use, the brake people continue to make bigger and better brakes. The brake pad people continue to get better and better. Because not only do you think about your brake package at Martinsville, but you think about the brake package at Infineon ( Sonoma, Calif. ), Watkins Glen (N. Y.) and at Richmond ( Va. ). They never stop developing them. I don’t see brakes being a huge problem. It’s still a thirty-four hundred pound racecar. It is still a hundred and ten-inch wheel base racecar. The biggest issues are going to be the downforce, how that affects braking, and whether we have the proper cooling.
“If you can look past the brakes it goes back to the racing on the track. What about passing? I don’t think passing is going to be an issue. Everybody talks about this car being wider. It is maybe one-inch narrower than a truck and the trucks put on great races at Martinsville, great races at Bristol, great races everywhere we go. I don’t think the width of the new Dodge Avenger is going to make any difference. It is still going to be the same old tough place. If Bristol was any indication of what Martinsville is going to be like, when you look at the qualifying speeds, everyone is running the same speeds. That is why it is going to be tough to pass.
We have had some success at Martinsville. We have passed a lot of cars. Hopefully braking and passing won’t be on our mind too much. Getting the Marathon American Spirit Motor Oil Dodge to the front is our real focus. ”
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