|
Food
City 500 |
| Bristol, TN. (March
23, 2001)
“Bristol is one of my favorite tracks. I’ve had a lot of success at that track. If your car is handling right, it’s a lotta of fun. If its not, you’re in for a very, very long day.” - Ron Hornaday, Team Conseco Driver Bristol, TN. (March 25, 2001) - Team Conseco driver Ron Hornaday avoided trouble and completed all 500 laps to finish 21st in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.Hornaday
rolled off the grid in the 40th spot, but when the
green flag waved he immediately began to move to the front.
Hornaday maintained his poise on the track narrowly
avoiding a number of wrecks that happened just in front of the
Conseco Pontiac. By
the mid point of the race, he had made up more than 20 positions
and was running in the top 20.
A late race pit stop dropped him to the 23rd
position before he chased down and passed two cars to finish 21st. “I'm
very happy to come to Bristol, finish a Winston Cup race - all
500 laps -after starting almost dead-last,” Hornaday told
reporters after the race. “It's my own fault for the way
we qualified. But this Conseco crew never gives up.
We maybe shouldn't have pitted the last time, but we were just
getting inconsistent tires and I wasn't happy with the set of
tires I had. It's a
great run for us. We're real happy with it. That's
what we needed to do. We just needed to catch cautions at
the right time. Now it’s off to Texas to race in
A.J.’s back yard. We
tested real well there last week and I’m really looking
forward to it.” |
Team
Conseco will use chassis 1407 this weekend in Bristol. This
chassis was raced two times last season at both Bristol races
with Dick Trickle who qualified the car 12th and finished 31st
in the spring race and Rick Mast who started 42nd and finished
29th in the fall. This past winter, the car was stripped down
and completely rebuilt for the 2001 season.