Pepsi 400

July 3, 2004
Daytona, FL

Derrike will be running at Daytona in the Pepsi 400. Earlier today, Derrike gave us the details. "I will be driving the WW Motorsports #94 Dodge this weekend at Daytona. It’s a brand new super speedway car of mine that has never been on the track, so we are going down cold. We’ll be running a Joey Arrington restrictor plate engine in our Dodge. We anticipate doing some dyno testing this week in preparation for Daytona. We are pleased to have Racer’s Edge Sports Drink as our sponsor at Daytona. Our goal, obviously, is to make the field and to have a productive showing. We are planning to run at Chicago the following week in the Tropicana 400. After that, our schedule is not finalized."

NASCAR.com showed the sponsor as Racer's Edge.

In the first practice, Derrike was 43rd fastest with a time of 48.958 and speed of 183.831.

In Qualifying, Derrike's lap was 48.567 with a speed of 185.311 which put him 42nd fastest. This was not fast enough for the top 38 and other teams had provisionals so even though Derrike was faster, the other teams were able to use provisionals and make the race whereas Derrike will miss the show.

In reviewing last week’s Daytona Cup effort, Derrike indicated, "We were disappointed that we didn’t qualify on speed for the Pepsi 4oo. However, looking at the total picture we were pleased with what we accomplished in getting our car ready in one week. We had trouble in getting our car through inspection and as a result we got only fifteen minutes of practice. As a result we qualified with only four laps practice in a car that had never been on the track prior to those laps. Dan Glaus, our crew chief, made some good choices for setup. Our lack of preparation time really hurt us. Still we came up only about eight one hundredths short of qualifying on speed. Our engine performance was superb. We bottomed out in qualifying and that hurt our speed. Overall we did not get the result we had hoped for, but we made major strides in our first outing as a team. We have made a decision not to go to Chicago for this weekend’s Cup race. We are meeting this week to determine our schedule for testing and future races."

Incidentally, there was some confusion as to what make of car Derrike would be running. He ran a Dodge at Daytona and will be running Dodges the rest of this season.