Craven going for big purse The Winston an ‘all-star’ race

Newburgh’s Ricky Craven will have an opportunity to pocket $1 million for his PPI Motorsports Team when The Winston takes center stage on the Winston Cup schedule Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway (N.C.).

It is a non-points race but there is a $3 million purse, including $1 million for the winner. The race is for drivers who have won a Winston Cup race in the previous or current season; taken the checkered flag for The Winston in the previous five seasons or claimed a Winston Cup points championship.

Craven, who won the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 at Darlington Raceway (S.C. ) in March, is one of 23 drivers who has qualified. The 24th and final driver in the field will be the winner of The Winston Open, which will be held right before The Winston.

The Winston will be divided into segments of 40, 30 and 20-lap races over the 11/2-mile oval. The top 20 cars will advance from the 40-lap race, the top 14 will move on from the 30-lap race and a vote of the fans on NASCAR.com will dictate how many cars will be inverted for the start of the final 20-lap event.

“Everybody likes it. It’s an all-star race. It’s like baseball’s All-Star game or the Pro Bowl in football,” said Craven. “It’s a pleasure and an honor to be a part of it. It’s a great group to be a part of. It’s an exclusive group. I know how hard the business can be and how difficult it is to win a race.

“Even though points aren’t at stake, there’s a lot to race for,” added Craven referring to the prestige and the $1 million.

Cal Wells III, owner of the PPI Motorsports Team, pointed out that The Winston will provide valuable knowledge in preparation for the following weekend’s Coca-Cola 600 Winston Cup race at Lowe’s.

The Tide Pontiac No. 32 is coming off its worst finish in 19 races dating back to last season: a 38th resulting from a poor-handling car and a wreck that caused front suspension damage at the Pontiac Excitement 400 in Richmond two weekends ago. The teams had last weekend off for Mother’s Day.

The 38th dropped Craven to 11th in the points standings. The team finished 15th a year ago after a 21st place finish their first year together.

“We need to improve,” said Wells. “We’re doing much better than we were at this point last season. We’ve already won a race [which they failed to do last year] and equaled the top five finishes [3] we had all of last season. But we’ve made some poor decisions. A couple of key mistakes have cost us around 150 points.”

It has been a transition year for the team: going from a Ford to a Pontiac, from a Robert Yates engine package to their own PPI-Motorsports engine program and they have also a new crew chief in Scott Miller and a first-year race engineers in Kent Day.

“The engine program is doing well. We aren’t up to Yates standards yet but we’re getting there,” said Wells. “Kent is doing a great job.”

He has also been pleased with Miller but said it will take time for Miller to adapt to Craven’s needs before and during the race.

The pit crew, according to Wells, has done an exemplary job on pit stops.

He feels the team needs to qualify better as the average starting spot has been 23rd. They have had only one start better than 14th.

Wells would also like to see the team “string together a series of top 10 finishes and another win or two” to help solidify a top 10 finish in points.

Craven said flat tracks like Richmond, Loudon (N.H.), Phoenix and Miami have caused the team problems and they need to improve on them.

“So we’ve scheduled a test at Loudon for June 30 and July 1. We have never done that,” said Craven. “We’ve got to get better on flat tracks. We’ve got to continue to develop that part of our program. We identified the problems we had at Richmond and we’re correcting them. That race was the only one in the first 11 in which we didn’t have any muscle.”

Wells said the testing at Loudon “should really help us” for the New England 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway on July 20 and the Sylvania 300 there on Sept. 14.

“I’d love to see Ricky win that in front of his [New England] fans,” said Wells.

Wells said he would like to extend Craven’s contract in the near future- he is under contract through 2004 with an option year- and said he continues to hope they can add a second driver and team for next season.

“That would be a big help to Ricky. And it would allow us to make money in the sport,” said Wells.

The addition of another driver and team would provide seven more testing dates for PPI Motorsports in addition to more technical help. The two teams would compare notes.