"PRUETT GETS HIGH MARKS            
IN BRICKYARD 400"                   

Published in the Johnson County (Ind.) Daily Journal, Aug. 7, 2000 ©

         They say experience is the greatest teacher. If it is, then Scott Pruett graduated with honors Saturday in the Brickyard 400.

         Pruett, whose biggest lessons were in the classrooms of Indy-car racing until he switched school districts this year, applied what he had learned in half a semester of NASCAR Winston Cup racing to bring home a 10th-place finish at the Brickyard Saturday afternoon, by far his highest mark in a season filled mostly with hard knocks, poor final grades and long waits in the principal's garage. But the tanned transfer student from California earned his first gold star in the Winston Cup ranks at the speedway where he had also placed 10th in his first Indianapolis 500 11 years earlier.

         "It was awesome," Pruett exclaimed shortly after Saturday's matriculation on the 21/2-mile Indy oval, like a kid bringing home his first good report card. "I've been telling everybody that we were gaining a lot of momentum, but the results just didn't show it until today."

         It wasn't exactly straight A's Saturday for the 40-year-old Brickyard rookie who won two Indy-car races, including the Michigan 500 in 1995, but it at least rated the low honor roll as Pruett and his bright orange-and-yellow Ford Taurus ran in the top 15 all afternoon and as high as fifth in his first try at NASCAR's second biggest race of the year. Not bad for a struggling driver trying to adapt to a new school environment, who had not finished higher than 19th in 16 previous Winston Cup races and who almost dropped out of school after a very long afternoon at the tough half-mile at Richmond, Va., in May.

         "After Richmond, I thought I was ready to give it up," Pruett admitted Saturday, serving a better kind of detention in the racing spotlight. "I ran the slowest I could ever imagine driving, I worked harder than I could ever remember driving and, in the end, I was done.

         "I mean, I was spent, physically and mentally spent, and I went home and talked to my wife that night. And I go, 'There's no way - I can't drive these cars, I can't do this deal, I made the wrong decision, and I'm just ready to pack it in.'"

         But the veteran race driver who had finished a discouraging 27th in that Richmond 400, 10 laps behind winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. - another new kid at Cuptown High - didn't turn in his books and locker key. "Being in a number of other situations where you've got to up that focus and that drive, I picked myself up and got back to it," Pruett recollected, from near the head of the class of post-race interviews, "and, a couple of races later, we really started hitting on some things."

         Pruett, with a constant smile that even outshined the round iridescent-orange logo of his laundry detergent sponsor on his racing cap, attributed much of the marked improvement to the hiring of new crew chief and tutor Brad Parrott by team owner Cal Wells III in June. "We were already focused and heading in the right direction," the Brickyard 400's Rookie of the Race, who had always shown a high aptitude for articulation, explained. "Brad was able to take that energy and just really fine-tune it and be the catalyst we needed to align all the pieces in the right direction.

         "I think, as a team, Michigan (in June) was a big turning point for us. We finished 19th there, had a good strong run. We went to Sears Point (Calif.) after that; we were leading the race but, unfortunately had a little incident with Jeff (Gordon). We came back and ran well at Pocono; we had an engine failure, but I think we would've finished top 10 there."

         So, the learning curve had been steep for the native Californian who had almost won his last previous race at Indy, the 1995 Indianapolis 500, leading eight laps late in the race before spinning out. The adjustment to cars with rooves and fenders that outweighed his old Indy-cars by nearly a ton was no snap, even with his years of experience at the track they call the Brickyard and other highly educational ovals.

         "I knew it was going to be hard," the still-smiling Pruett said Saturday. "There aren't many parallels. I ran side-by-side with some of these guys today, and we actually leaned on each other, and there is no way in hell you'd ever do that in open-wheel cars.

         "Overall, the biggest obstacle has been trying to drive the car too hard. I'm used to driving the car down into the turn as unbelievably deep as you can, get on the brake and turn the car and then just stab the gas. A Cup car does not like that at all. I think that's one of the biggest problems that I've been overcoming, and just driving slower has helped me go faster."

         And the pupil of NASCAR-style driving showed what he had learned - and what he still needed to -- Saturday, just a week after young Cristiano da Matta's victory in Pruett's former ride with the Wells CART team at Chicago. "We had a great car for the first half of the race," Pruett reported. "We got some overcast, and the temperatures cooled off, and I just didn't know how much of a change to make to my car to loosen it up.

         "Everybody was getting tight, picking up push (understeer). That was the same position I was in, and I just couldn't articulate well enough to my crew chief to know how much to go. That's just the lack of experience."

         Still, with his 10th-place finish, Pruett came away from the Brickyard 400 with two valuable lessons, as he saw it once he no longer had to stand in a corner by himself. Lesson One: Some things never change at Indy, regardless of which race you're in.

         "There's nothing like the fans," Pruett observed post-race. "I remember coming to the 500, and it was just like an ocean of color out there because there were so many people. And you come back here and see the same thing again.

         "And now, you know what? Now I've competed in the Indianapolis 500 and finished in the top 10, and I've competed in the Brickyard 400 and finished in the top 10. There's only a handful of drivers who can come here and say that; I'm very proud to be in that group."

         Lesson Two: Good grades lead to more optimism, even when there are still a few tracks out there ready to smack your knuckles with a ruler. "I'm still a little intimidated going back to Darlington; I just never came to grips with that place," Pruett said of the prospects of finishing out the NASCAR schedule at tracks where, unlike Indianapolis, quick-studies get a second chance each year.

         "And Richmond? Man, I'm still scared to death of that place. Those have been my biggest struggles, but I'm really excited to go back to Michigan, very anxious to get back to Bristol, getting back to Talladega."

         "There are a lot of places that I'm going back to with a lot more confidence, a lot more understanding," added Pruett, like a true student of stock car racing who believes that learning can still begin at 40. "Every time I get out there on a track, as a driver, I'm learning an awful lot to take and apply to each new race I'm going to."

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 Copyright 2000 by Jerry Miller ©

 Color photo courtesy of PPI Motorsports

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