All Pro Bumper to Bumper 300

October 5, 1996
Concord, NC

Qualifying for the race is on Thursday. "We've got the Badcock Ford ready to go," said Derrike Cope in anticipation for the race. "And then we have Rockingham and Miami. We'll be busy the latter portion of the year."

With a qualifying time of 31.194, Derrike qualified in 11th position for the Saturday race. "The car raced real good, so even though we didn't qualify all that good, we'll be in good shape for the race. I got through one and two really good and I was gonna hustle it really hard through three and four. But I turned a little too early and got down on the apron and hit the tailpipes, and the car turned on me a little. I had to stick my foot in it and hang on. It wasn't a bad lap, but it could've been better."

This is what happened to Derrike during the race:

• 8th position - lap 13
• 13th - lap 16
• 18th - lap 18
• A caution occurred and Derrike went to the pits. Since not many cars pitted, it pushed him to the back of the field.
• 35th - lap 41
• On lap 48, there was an accident and Derrike did a great job avoiding the traffic in front of him by running down pit road.
• 29th - lap 56
• On lap 64, there was another accident. Derrike was slowing down to avoid it and was nailed from behind resulting in a spin into the wall. The result was Derrike driving the car directly to the garage.

Derrike ended the race in 37th.

Derrike said, "We qualified good, had a good car. The morning practice the day before we were very fast, the car was working very well, and then we bought a set of tires from somebody to go and test the final hour, and the car starting pushing violently. We made a lot of adjustments and I think we basically had a bad set of tires. We worked to get the car freed up, put a new set of tires on the next day and the car was violently loose. So it comes down that we bought a set of tires that were basically terrible."

On the end of the race, Derrike said, "Somebody had wrecked. I saw the wreck and I started to slow down, and somebody behind me just didn't see it, and he ran in the back of me. He ran in the back of us and turned us around, and hit us up into the fence. We tore the rear clip on the car. So it was a pretty unfortunate day really for us.

"We've had a pretty decent year with the Busch car. We haven't torn up anything, we've had some really good runs, had an opportunity to win a race at Atlanta, and ran a top ten at Daytona, so we've had a pretty good year. But at least for the young group that I've got, we've qualified well, we've run very productively."

On 1997, Derrike said, "We're going to build Pontiacs and we're selling all our Ford Busch cars. We're hoping to acquire a sponsor and to run the scheduled Busch program next year with Pontiacs."