"MERGER, MONEY PRODUCE NEW-FOUND SPEED            
FOR MUSGRAVE'S BRICKYARD 400 ENTRY"                   

Published in the Johnson County (Ind.) Daily Journal, Aug. 7, 1999 ©

         The oldest saying in auto racing probably is: "Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?"

         No one knows the correlation between money and speed better right now than Ted Musgrave. Thursday, his car owner announced that he was merging his operation with that of a better-financed team. Friday, Musgrave went faster, fast enough to make the starting field for today's Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

         More than coincidence? Well, not really, not yet, the way Musgrave sees it. "No, no, we just worked a little harder," he responded with a smile Friday, after sending the camouflage-green No. 75 Mock Motorsports Ford around the Brickyard oval at 176.946 mph and into the 30th starting slot for the 400.

         "We just changed the car a little bit," added the Illinois-born driver who only managed 176.277 mph in Thursday's first-round time trials. "We had to use Thursday as a test day, more or less, and today we're just catching up to what we're trying to do."

         The improvement in Musgrave's fortunes at Indy came almost immediately after car owner Butch Mock announced the day before that he was merging his NASCAR Winston Cup effort with Galaxy Enterprises, a well-heeled publications company that already owns a Busch Grand National car. Mock said the merger would bring "the right resources" to support Musgrave's car through the rest of this season and beyond.

         That was where Musgrave saw the connection of money and speed coming into play. "I think it's a pretty neat deal," he said, another smile creasing his swarthy face. "We can go out and get more of the things and the people we need.

         "We've had a lot of bad trouble this year, and that's what we're going to try to overcome right now. Looking back to the first half of the year, that's our worst half; now we're getting into the better half."

         To kick off the better half, however, Musgrave, Mock and the rest of their team had to use their mental resources to figure out if they should stand on their Thursday speed or take another crack at the big Indy oval during Friday's qualifying. "There was a lot of deep thought going on until this morning," the 43-year-old driver who now calls Daytona Beach, Fla., home said, "until we saw how it all played out, who was going to stand on their times and who wasn't.

         "Just by watching that and seeing who was behind us in the point standings (which determines who gets into a race as provisional starters) made our decision. We had to go; we couldn't stand on our time because we knew that the odds were that two people were going to beat our time from yesterday, which there were (Steve Park and Rick Mast)."

         Obviously, the choice was the wiser one. Musgrave's time from Thursday, 35th fastest at the time, would not have landed him one of the 36 starting spots determined by speed and a provisional spot in the 43-car lineup would not have been available, either.

         "We played it smart, as it turned out," Musgrave said, standing inside the Mock Motorsports garage. "We knew that our only chance of going was to go again. We just didn't want to sit in the garage here and hope and pray that nobody went any faster because that just doesn't happen.

         "I'd really been sweating it, not because of the temperatures but because of the pressure."

         Now the only thing left to make the budding union of merger, new money and more speed for car 75 a going concern would be a big finish today at the Brickyard. "We want to get a top 10 finish," said Musgrave, whose best finish in five previous Brickyard 400s was a 13th.

         "I'm not saying we have no shot at the win - we're going to try. But I think, if we come out of here in the top 10, 12, somewhere in there, I think we'd say we had made the best of it and we can build on that because our better days are ahead of us."

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 Copyright 1999 by Jerry Miller ©

 Color photo courtesy of NASCAR

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