BACE / Raines Rebound to Finish 26th at Kansas

KANSAS CITY, KS (October 5, 2003) - A 26th place finish may appear mediocre to most but for Tony Raines and BACE Motorsports it was quite an accomplishment this weekend during the NASCAR Winston Cup Series visit to the 1.5-mile (Kansas City) Kansas Speedway.

BACE crew chief Larry Carter chose Chassis 7413 for duty in Sunday's Banquet 400 presented by ConAgra Foods. The car of choice was the same piece that Raines had piloted earlier in the season at Lowe's Motor Speedway during the Winston Open and Coca-Cola 600 but during its downtime it had received a new body, one that Carter looked forward to bringing on the trip out west.

"This is a brand new body on this car," Carter said prior to the start of the weekend. "We think that this car is going to be one of the best if not the best car that we have built all year. We took this car to the wind tunnel and the numbers were excellent so we are looking forward to seeing what it can do on the track."

Unfortunately, the life of 7413 would be a short one after Raines endured a hard crash during the first practice session on Friday morning prior to qualifying. An engine failure under the hood of the No. 74 caused oil to coat the tires and brakes and prevented Raines from being able to stop or steer his machine. The end result was a fiery single car crash and a hard hit into the outside wall through turns one and two.

"It blew an oil plug out of the oil pump and oiled down the entire engine bay so it wouldn't turn and it wouldn't slow down and it hit the wall pretty hard," said Raines. "It was our best body to date and I was kind of disappointed because I liked how the car was handling so far in practice. We really never got to see exactly how good it was because we were scuffing tires during our first few times out in practice. I felt like it had a lot of potential. We expired it way to early in its career. We'll just have to build another one just like it."

The BACE Crew quickly went to work on the secondary car, Chassis 7411, which previously has not been raced during the 2003 season. There would not be enough time remaining in practice for Raines to get any practice time in his back-up machine so qualifying would be his first chance to see how the newly promoted car would handle at Kansas.

Raines and company decided their plan of attack for qualifying was to "shake the car down" on the first lap of their two-lap qualifying run to be sure there were no bugs in it before running wide open on the second lap to try and post a time fast enough for the top-36. But in the end it would only take one lap to make the show as Raines posted an impressive 30.652-second time on his "shake down lap" placing him 35th on the board.

On Sunday, Raines experienced a tight handling condition from the drop of the green flag. The BACE crew did not waiver and continued to make adjustments to the No. 74 throughout the race to better the handling of the car. The biggest adjustment to the BACE Chevrolet on Sunday would come on lap 170 when the crew would raise the hood to change both front shocks, a major change to be made during the course of a race.

The persistence of the team paid off as Raines finished the Banquet 400 in the 26th position just one lap behind the race winner Ryan Newman. Finishing behind Newman was Bill Elliott, Jeremy Mayfield, Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon to round out the top-five.

"It seemed as if the tight condition was a result of the aero (dynamics) of this body," Raines said after the race. "We haven't had a lot of on-track time with this car before Kansas, which is a good thing since it is one of back-up cars, so hopefully we can cut this body off during the off season and make this car like the one that we wrecked on Friday."

"I think that 26th is a fairly respectable finish after everything that this team had to overcome this weekend," continued Raines. "These guys worked so hard this weekend to get ready to race on Sunday and it's disappointing that we didn't run better than this but for a back-up car, we'll take 26th and get ready for Charlotte."

The 26th place finish leaves team owner Bill Baumgardner in the 39th position in the NASCAR Winston Cup Owners Point Standings. Baumgardner stands only 19 points behinds the No. 0 Team in 38th position and 26 points behind the No. 45 Team in 37th place. Raines also held at the 36th place position in the driver point standings.

Next weekend Tony Raines and the BACE Motorsports Team remain on their home turf in North Carolina as they return to Lowe's Motor Speedway for the UAW-GM Quality 500. This race marks the first fall event that will take place under the lights and will air live on Saturday, October 11th at 7:30 p.m. EDT with coverage beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT on the TNT Television network and the Motor Racing Network (MRN) affiliates.