Mike Wallace Spun Out After Going For Win at Inaugural Truck Race in Talladega

 
Talladega, AL (October 7, 2006) -- Mike Wallace won the Inaugural truck race in Daytona in 2000 and set out to do the same thing at the Inaugural truck race in Talladega.  Wallace, known as one of the best restrictor plate racers in NASCAR, was the favorite pick to win Saturday's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race while driving the #15 GEICO Chevrolet for Billy Ballew Motorsports.
 
Mike started 15th on the grid and quickly took the Gecko on a smooth ride to the front at the historic 2.66-mile tri-oval.  Consistently running up front all day, Wallace took the lead after 40 laps and maintained the position until a caution fell and most of the trucks headed down pit road for pit stops.  Wallace returned to the track in the 2nd position, giving up one spot in the pits.    
 
While battling with Mark Martin for the lead on the final lap, halfway to the checkered flag, in the 94-lap race, Mike Skinner came on the outside and turned into the side of Wallace sending him head-on into the wall.  Wallace, heartbroken, walked away from his truck uninjured, unofficially finishing 26th.
 
"It's unfortunate because the GEICO Chevrolet was great today and I was looking forward to giving GEICO their first Truck Series win," said a dejected Wallace following the race.  "The guy who drives that #5 truck should be smarter than that, so it is very frustrating."
 
He continued, "I had a lot of fun out there today and the Billy Ballew Motorsports team gave me a great truck and did a good job of keeping me up front.  It also means a lot that GEICO was on-board with us here this weekend.  I've had a long relationship with GEICO and I was hoping to reciprocate their support with a win here today.  The good thing is that we were going for the win, but we just came up a little bit short because of another driver's lack of patience."
 
Mark Martin, who won the race, was loudly proclaiming his praises for Wallace, even going so far as to say that he could not have won the race without Mike Wallace. 
 
"I'll tell you what, without Mike Wallace's help there I knew we were in trouble because we had all of those Toyotas.  I knew Mike Wallace would help me some, and I also knew he'd try to beat me, too.  The race was really going to get interesting there before the crash happened," Martin said after the race. 
 
During his press conference, Martin said, "There were a couple of keys to that thing working out today. The first thing was we overheated early in the race and got behind, we made a friend coming through in Mike Wallace.  Mike and I worked together quite a bit, and there at the end when we were lined up there with all of those Toyotas it was not looking good there. Mike gave me the push that I really needed there on the restart. I know Mike Wallace real well. He still had plans for winning that race. We came off of turn two and everything got pretty crazy there behind him and he wound up getting caught up in the thing."
 
This marks the second time in two days that the winning driver of a race credited Mike Wallace for helping him to win the race.  After Friday's ARCA race, winner Frank Kimmel also credited Wallace for pushing him to the front.