UAW-GM Quality 500 Live Report by Ron Cruse

Hi there, I am Ron and have been a Derrike Cope fan for about a year. My wife, Nina and I went to Charlotte and had a great racing weekend.

Charlotte had a lot of excitement built before our trip. Tickets and motel reservations were set up months in advance by some folks that we had visited before at the Winston. There are a group of 50 or so NASCAR fans that chat in Yahoo / Sports / Auto and this was the third time Nina and I had traveled to races hosted by various couples. So anticipation had been building for weeks. Then the best news came with quals with Derrike winning the Pole.

We left our area, which is just west of Philly (pup dropped off at kennel, another story) on Friday morning and drove to Charlotte in just under 8 hours. Motel was in Salisbury, and after freshening up, we went in to visit our friends and meet some of the chatters. Most chatters had different drivers as their favorite, but they all seemed to wish Derrike well. On Saturday we attended the Busch Series race along with a local boy scout group and had a really nice time. (OK, I like Dale Jarrett and was wishing his #32 would do better, Nina liked Buckshot Jones, and I got heavy continued razzing as he passed DJ.....) Saturday night was another chatters party that ended early, so we could get some rest for the big race.

Lines of traffic going in were of course long and we wound up parking about a mile across the highway off turn 4 and of course our seats were in turn 2. You can imagine the walk with the coolers and race fan gear. We got to our seats as the pace car was leading the field around the track. Yep, right there on the pole was the #30 Gumout car. Looked real fine there. There were a lot of different paint jobs, specifically the Batman scenario on the #88 of Jarrett (was hard to pick him out).

At the start, Derrike ran very well, more power than most but as you know as the race went forward he fell back in to the pack... Crashes were awesome, but the big pile up was too close to the fence under us to see very well, just glad no one was hurt. I must say that Jeff Gordon is a very lucky driver to avoid getting caught up in the accidents through the day.

The red flag was interesting. We could see that as the cars went through the spray, they lost traction prior to entering turn 3. What was unfortunate was that the track announcer went into detail about the stands built along that part of the back stretch as being for those unfortunate folks that could not otherwise afford to be at the race.... Like, wow, thanks for pointing out the poor people...

Mark Martin was of course dominant and Derrike did very well to stay ahead of him and remain on the lead lap. Raised my hopes for the remaining races.

One other observation, Jeff Gordon was running in 8th or so with 35 laps to go. I believe he switched on-board computers at that time. His car was noticeably faster as he moved up to assure a 5th place finish. Thinkin’ he is now far enough ahead in points, that he is holding back a bit.

After the race, we had the long walk back to the cars, but were very well prepared for tailgating. Had about 12 to 15 chatters there and we partied hard and took a lot of pics. Sunday evening we took the hosting family out to dinner and mostly rested. Monday was a drive home day, picking up a very happy pup from the kennel.

Next race for us will be at Atlanta. Maybe we can meet some of you there?

Derrike is very impressive as a driver and as a speaker. I think we and Bahari' have picked a winner. Good Luck to Derrike and the Bahari' Team.