Brickyard 400

August 7, 1999
Indianapolis, IN

In practice before qualifying, Derrike was 25th fastest among 55 cars with a time of 50.749 and speed of 177.343.

In first round qualifying, Derrike was  30th out on the track and after a little brush with the wall produced a time of 50.895 and speed of 176.835. That put the Jimmy Dean Pontiac in 17th position at the time. At the end of the round, the new Bahari'-Eel River Racing team was sitting in 30th position.

After qualifying, Derrike said, "I knew on the warm up lap, evidently the tape we put on, loosened the car up too much. There’s just some things we don’t really know. On the warm up lap I was very loose coming through turn three and went to the flag and I knew I had to drive it. I got up close to the wall out of one and it was so loose I couldn’t get it into the corner like I wanted to. The car wanted to come around. We’re just going to have to see where that ends up and go back at it tomorrow."

The team decided to stand on their time from the first round and watch the results from the second round. Fortunately there were not enough cars to push the Jimmy Dean Pontiac out of the race, so the new team made the first race they attempted in 31st position.

In Friday's first practice, Derrike was 4th fastest with a time of 50.845 and speed of 177.008. In Friday's second practice, Derrike was 37th fastest with a time of 53.176 and speed of 169.249.

Derrike started the race in 31st position, and finished in 32nd position, 1 lap down.

(Aug. 7, 1999) -- With a revamped race team, Jimmy Dean Pontiac driver Derrike Cope is hoping for a competitive rebirth over the course of the final 15 races of the NASCAR Winston Cup season.

He took those first initial steps with the newly formed Bahari’-Eel River Racing team by qualifying for and finishing Saturday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis. Cope, who qualified 31st, developed a miss in his motor on the very first lap but only finished one lap down to Dale Jarrett. Cope was 32nd. He stayed on the lead lap for the majority of the race despite the motor trouble.

Bahari’ Racing owner Chuck Rider sold his team to Jack Birmingham two weeks ago. Last Monday, Barry Dodson began work as crew chief and is still hiring new employees.

“We were off on the car all day. We tried two tires to get some track position in order to stay on the lead lap. We tried some stuff, but it just wasn’t there. We were too tight. We had a miss in the motor from the very first lap and that was disappointing, but I’m really delighted,” Cope said. “You’ve got to start somewhere. We made the race and we finished the race. We can take this Pontiac to Michigan. We’ll just see what went wrong, make our notes and we’ll be better. The more I put the throttle down it started missing on all the gears. It tried to clear up and was still kind of laboring. We’ll have to take it apart and look at it. Jarrett let us back in that one time that helped us stay on the lead lap longer. I thought it was a decent effort for our first time together. Barry Dodson just did an outstanding job. He’s worked with us less than a week. We had a pit crew today composed of a mish-mash of holdovers and new guys and some Busch guys and we actually made some decent pit stops. I’m really enthused right now.”

Next up for Birmingham’s Eel River Racing team is Sunday’s road course race at Watkins Glen, N.Y.

Jason White was at the race and provided a live report. Jason's Report