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.