AC-Delco 400

October 20, 1996
Rockingham, NC

Jimmy Fennig, crew chief, has left the team so it will be a collective effort from the rest of the team on Sunday for the race. Derrike Cope said, "We're just going to go down collectively and we're going to try to do the best we can and have a good productive race in Rockingham. We ran good there last race so hopefully we'll have a good run down there."

Derrike ended first round qualifying in 32nd position. The team decided to try again in second round qualifying and pulled out the second quickest time of the day. Thus, Derrike started the race in 27th position.

It didn't take long at the beginning of the race for Derrike to move quickly up the field. By lap 56, he had moved from 27th position up to 10th. This is what happened to Derrike during the race:

• 22nd position - lap 11 of 393
• 17th - lap 22
• 10th - lap 56
• 7th - lap 75
• around lap 80 there were green flag pit stops. Derrike stayed out to lead a lap thus picking up 5 bonus points. They showed Derrike taking his pit stop with a time of 20 seconds.
• 9th - lap 93
• a caution occurred and after pit stops, Derrike came out in 4th at lap 105.
• 12th - lap 111
• 5th - lap 170
• on lap 179, Derrike took the lead again after others took green flag pit stops. Again, they showed Derrike taking his pit stop with a time of 20.1 seconds.
• 5th - lap 200
• on lap 216, there was a caution and Derrike came in for a pit stop with the other leaders. We assume the team took only two tires because Derrike came out in 2nd. However, on the restart, he started falling back in the pack, probably because the other teams had taken four tires.
• 11th - lap 227

Around lap 270, Bobby Hamilton was following Derrike. Coming off a turn, Hamilton tagged Derrike in the left rear, spinning the Badcock/Pilot car into both the inside and outside walls, and ending the good day the team was having. When Derrike got the car to pit road and was trying to enter the garage, there was almost an incident with Jeff Gordon when Derrike discovered that he didn't have any brakes and couldn't stop the car. Fortunately, no damage was done.

After Derrike came out of his transporter, he said, "It's unfortunate for Badcock and Pilot because we had a good race car today. I was not so good at the start of the race with low air pressure but once it filled up, the car came back real strong. We were waiting to the end of the race to start coming up on air pressure to really give them a shot for it, but unfortunately it didn't work out."

Derrike finished the race in 39th after having led laps.

Editorial Note: This was the first race we can remember in recent history when the television crew actually showed Derrike in two pit stops with the stopwatch counting the time. Even though the finish of the race was not as we had hoped, we believe that this is a preview of the television coverage that will happen next year when Derrike drives for SKITTLES® Racing.