Stock car legend Richard Petty was unimpressed with Jeff Gordon’s power slide through Turn 4 on the way to winning the pole for Saturday’s Brickyard 400.
“He shouldn’t have put himself in that position,” Petty said. “He didn’t need to cut it that sharp. He had a couple of car lengths to the wall. I’d have taken it to the wall and let the wall straighten it out. If Bobby had done something like that, I’d have been on his butt.”
And while Petty’s manner may be laid back, Hamilton said that when Petty does get upset, he “points that long finger at you and you feel like you’re looking down the barrel of a .45.”
Foyt in jeopardy: A.J. Foyt’s chances of making Saturday’s race were looking grim after the 60-year-old driver went faster than only one of the 48 competitors who tried to qualify Thursday.
“We lost three-quarters of a second on new tires, and right now we don’t know where we lost it,” reported Foyt after his qualifying lap of 166.193 m.p.h. “It just wants to fly the front end. I can’t get it turned in the corners.”
Foyt will get a second chance to qualify Friday and probably needs to go at least 2 m.p.h. faster.
Non-tarnishable: Petty says he doesn’t think Foyt is diminishing his reputation by continuing to race long past his prime years.
“When he was doing it, he was as good as there was,” pointed out the King. “Anything he does afterwards doesn’t take anything away from that. It’s just like a baseball old-timers game. Just because you strike out when people are used to seeing you hit home runs doesn’t take anything away.”
Priorities: Rick Mast may have won the pole for the first Brickyard 400 a year ago, but his abiding memory, he said, is of having to run the entire race on seven cylinders.
“Winning the pole didn’t do as much for me as losing the race hurt me mentally,” he said. “That car ran perfect all week, and what happened in the race stung me more than anything that’s ever happened to me.”
This time, he said, given the choice between two cars to drive here, he picked the one that will give him the best chance to win. “I knew I was giving up a chance at the pole,” he said, “but I’ve already done that. This car will run better in the race.”