July 4th Weekend Racing

It really doesn't matter if you are a fan of Ricky Craven's or not. You still have to give him lots of credit for fighting back from his illness, caused by repeated head injuries and trauma. His magic qualifying mile, on the "The Magic Mile" race track at Loudon, NH, was good enough to knock Jeff Gordon off the pole. Ricky was last to qualify, and thrilled the crowd with his first competitive Winston Cup lap in four months. Still looking for his first WC victory, he knows that with some good luck, his chances are the best he's going to see, at this track where he's won races in other divisions. Ricky has survived some horrendous bone breaking crashes in the last couple of years, but he stated on TNN's Inside NASCAR, "Fear's something that I don't recognize, it's not even part of the picture."

The Pepsi 400 at Daytona, Fla., was canceled due to the wildfire crisis in the area. The nighttime race has been rescheduled to Saturday, Oct. 17th, 9 p.m. Eastern. More than 30 of the Daytona Speedway staff have been assisting fire fighters in the area. All of the bottled water and ice, and lots of other sundries stockpiled for the race, was used in support of the firefighting effort. By Sunday Morning, there were over 40,000 evacuees camping at the speedway. So far, the 450+ acres of the Speedway property have escaped any fire damage. There have been major road closings in the area, and entire counties have been evacuated in the area.

So, with the Winston Cup race called off, there was a big hole left in the weekend for those anticipating the much touted "Race under the lights" at the newly lighted Daytona track. The drivers were reported to have mixed reactions, some were anxious to get racing, and some were pleased with the surprising time off to spend the 4th with their families and friends. Other drivers and teams were aware of the newly cramped schedule in October, when they were figuring on a weekend off.

The DieHard 250 was won by "Little E" in Milwaukee. "The Milwaukee Mile" race track is actually in West Allis, Wisconsin. This was the first time the rookie driver had raced this track, but he wasn't intimidated by it's nearly flat surface. This was Dale Earnhardt Jr's third win of the season, and the third of his short Busch Grand National career. Little E led for 209 of the 250 laps.

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