Almirola hoping to improve on '07 Martinsville debut
By Rea White - Associate Editor
Saturday, March 29, 2008
- TEXT SIZE: Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Reset Text Size
- No Comments. Leave a Comment
- Digg This
- Add to Del.icio.us
- RSS Feeds
Latest Headlines
MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Aric Almirola knows one thing about racing at Martinsville Speedway: He doesn’t want to catch on fire again.
The 24-year-old is preparing to make his second start of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season in the Dale Earnhardt Inc. No. 8 this weekend. He qualified third for Sunday’s Goody’s Cool Orange 500, a performance that puts him in position to match the eighth-place finish that he earned in his opening race of the season at Bristol.
Almirola admits that the qualifying effort “far exceeded” the team’s expectations.
“It means a lot obviously, when you have good cars, it makes it easy.,” Almirola said. “Having fun. All the guys on the U.S. Army team are a great group of guys and they work really hard. They have confidence in me and I have confidence in them. It makes it fun when I come to the race track, that is what it is all about."
Almirola raced for DEI last season at Martinsville, but that race didn’t turn out as well as he’d hoped. It also did not give him much time on the 0.526-mile Virginia oval.
"I learned that I didn't want to catch on fire,” Almirola said of the outing in which his car burst into flames after 111 laps and caused him to finish 43rd. “That was bad. We didn't learn very much, we didn't have a very good car. We fought it the entire weekend that we were here. But, the No. 8 team, [crew chief] Tony [Gibson] and the guys on this team have notoriously run good here.”
That showed in the qualifying effort.
“They have had cars here and have a really good setup for this race track,” he said. “We unloaded good today and didn't make my job that hectic from the time we unloaded, we were pretty close. We just worked on it and tweaked it and made it a little bit better. It was nice to unload that close."
- Mentioned Drivers:
- Aric Almirola
No Comments
Be the first to comment on "Almirola hoping to improve on '07 Martinsville debut". Login or sign up for a free account below to post your comment