Big Week at Charlotte for Lance Team

EVENT: CARQUEST AUTO PARTS 300
TRACK: LOWE'S MOTOR SPEEDWAY
CONCORD, N.C.
DATE: MAY 24, 2000

CONCORD, N.C. (MAY 24, 2000) - For the No. 25 Team Rensi Motorsports Lance Snacks Chevrolet team, it doesn't get much bigger than this.

Charlotte Speedweeks always brings a bevy of activity for the team, and this year is certainly no different. In addition to the NASCAR Busch Series, Grand National Division CarQuest Auto Parts 300 at Lowe's Motor Speedway, the week is also a busy one for Lance, Inc., itself, with participation in the annual Harris Teeter Race Festival and Food Lion Speedstreet, along with the annual Race Day at the Lance plant in South Charlotte.

Race Day at the Lance plant included a tour of the plant by the entire race team, with drivers Kenny Wallace and Andy Santerre getting an opportunity to meet Lance employees and sign autographs.

"This was a pretty neat deal," said Wallace, who'll pilot the No. 25 Lance Chevrolet in Saturday's race. "We went through the Lance factory, and I thought to myself, 'man, this is for the whole country.' It's amazing the massive amount of food that they have to make for the entire United States.

"Another thing that got me was all the different kinds of smells, from the cheese crackers to the peanut butter crackers to the potato chips, to the popcorn to the peanut brittle bars. I'm really amazed by the people that can sit down there and do those jobs. I couldn't do it. They're special."

"The tour was great," Santerre said. "It's pretty interesting to go through the Lance plant and see how everything is made. You eat that stuff all the time, but you don't realize how many steps it takes to produce a cracker. The best thing for me was to go through the potato chip plant and get a handful of the potato chips and popcorn as it comes off the line.

"We also got to meet a lot of the employees, and at least now they can recognize us on the racetrack. They'll put a face with the name, and that's always good. The Lance plant is quite a place, with that many employees working diligently. It's pretty awesome."

On the track, the Lance team will try to turn things around on the intermediate venues. The team has struggled on the 1.5-mile tracks this season, but is coming off a sixth-place finish two weeks ago with Santerre in the car at New Hampshire International Speedway.

Crew chief David Ifft said the team recently tested at Charlotte and hopes it found some things that will help bring the Lance Chevy to the front of the pack on Saturday.

"We've got a car that we ran last year a couple of times, and we put a new body on it," Ifft said. "Everybody knows we've been struggling at the mile-and-a-half, two-mile tracks. We'll try a little something different this time around. We're taking some of the drag out of the body and some of the downforce, and we're hoping maybe that will help."

It will be Wallace's first race in the Lance Chevy since the April 15 Touchstone Energy 300 at Talladega Superspeedway.

"I'd say we learned a lot from our test session at Charlotte, and hopefully that will pay off for us," Wallace said. "The 1.5-mile tracks have been a sore spot for us, no doubt about it. We went to work and hung a new body trying to work on our aerodynamics.

"We heard some stories about what Michael Waltrip's team did. They didn't make the race at Texas and put a new body on it and ran really well at Fontana. So, we've worked on our aerodynamics and we've got a good chassis setup. We're really confident right now and can't wait to get on the track."

Bud Pole Qualifying for the CarQuest Auto Parts 300 is set for Thursday at 1 p.m., with positions 1-25 to be determined. Second-round qualifying is scheduled for noon Friday, while the green flag will drop on the race Saturday shortly after 1 p.m.