UAW/GM Teamwork 500

June 16, 1996
Pocono, PA

Derrike and the team brought out a new chassis for the race and ended up with a second place qualifying. Derrike was on the pole for awhile for the first time in his career until Jeff Gordon grabbed the top spot.

The Bobby Allison team has relied upon other people's chassis's and for the first time brought the work in-house and the results were shown. The entire team did an excellent job throughout the race including turning out good pit stop times. At the 102nd of the 200 laps, Derrike had led 25 laps.

Unfortunately at that point on a restart, Derrike hit the back of Robert Pressley which crushed the front end of the car. This caused the car to drop back in the pack to the 13th spot during the subsequent laps. On lap 115, the car had to come to the pits to see if an overheating problem could be fixed. As Bobby Allison said in the garage, "Shucks."

The team worked hard in the garage to get the car back on the track. Derrike then ended up in 27th position.

Even though the end result was disappointing, let's hope that this race is just the start of the major improvements the team is making. The car definitely had some horsepower today which you could tell from the way Derrike could pull away from some cars early on. It was also a pleasure being able to watch the race and hear Derrike's name the majority of the time.