Closing the Deal

As of this late-summer writing, Rusty Wallace has won seven Budweiser pole awards with his Miller Lite Penske Ford. That in itself makes for a strange story, but the question arises, ‘When a driver is so strong and winning so many poles, how does it play on his mind when he can’t win as many races?’ A quick look back to the first Dover race and we can see how an offhand remark from a loyal fan may have helped change the pattern.

An hour after the last happy hour of practice at Dover, Rusty Wallace was signing autographs. Stephanie Trammell, a big time Rusty Wallace fan, waited for her turn. After getting her shirt autographed, she smiled and said thanks. Then as an afterthought, added, “but when are you guys going to start closing the deal? Winning poles and leading all those laps … when are we going to start closing the deal on Sunday?”

“Closing the deal,” mused Rusty. “That’s pretty good terminology. Write that one down, Tom,” Rusty told Tom Ploansky (RWI logistics chief) “We gotta start closing the deal … I like that.”

Rusty Wallace: “I’ve had so many people come up to me, saying, man, you’re practicing great, you’re winning poles—I think if you look at the stats, I think we lead more laps than anybody in NASCAR this year—but the problem is, I’m sitting here running second and third with a few laps to go and all of a sudden something goes wrong and we finished sixth or seventh or something like that.

“They tell me that this is the most poles that we’ve ever won in any single season … and we’re not through yet by any means … but the bottom line is that we’ve got to start using these things we’re winning on Friday to cash in on Sunday. Winning the poles and leading the laps has got to start producing more wins. I told ’em earlier this week that we’ve got to start closing the deal and that’s what I mean. I mean, I’m not slamming what we’ve been doing … I’m proud of every end of our effort and wouldn’t change anything we’ve got going for us right now. It’s just that we need to have everything clicking on race day and start winning some more races. When I look and see us having won a race and winning all these poles, sure I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. But, at the same time, when you look at sixth through eighth-place finishes and you see that we’re sixth in points … and you look to move up further toward the front. That’s what we’re hoping to do …

“If I knew how to close a race I would have already done it, I mean we know that. But some of the things we’ve done, we’ve learned by our mistakes. Some of these times (I’ve) pitted when I didn’t have to. And there’s times when it’s paid off for me, like Bristol.

“I just think the 2000 Taurus is a little better car—it suits my style better. The engines have been incredibly more. We’ve got a lot more horsepower than we had last time here and all year long, and I think that’s really helped our qualifying effort and we’re putting an effort into it. We’ve got certain things we do to get the car qualified and then certain things we do to race. We put big importance into qualifying for a couple of reasons. First of all, track position is everything in the world and getting the number one pit selection is very important, too. So, when you get to start up front and get the number one pit selection, it’s a better deal.

“Yeah, it’s frustrating but at least I’ve got the one victory. I like all laps we’ve lead and the poles we got and stuff like that. That’s cool, but that is a little bit frustrating to not have more wins, but I’m sure we will before the year is out.”

(Editor’s Note: Shortly after Rusty said this, he did go out and win at Pocono.)