Ricky Rudd is one of NASCAR's true road warriors.
With six wins, Ricky Rudd is tied for second place in all-time NASCAR Cup road course victories and has 26 top-five road course finishes.
He ranks among the all-time leaders in virtually every category when it comes to road course races in the Nextel Cup Series. Rudd has six career victories, tied for second with Rusty Wallace, Bobby Allison and Richard Petty behind Jeff Gordon's nine wins. Rudd is tied with Darrell Waltrip for third in road course starts with 53 and first all-time with 26 top-five finishes.
Rudd says that the Car of Tomorrow adds a new wrinkle to preparing for road courses.
The obvious question? Why?
"I'm not really sure," Rudd admitted. "I think it goes way back.
"When I was a kid, we used to race go-karts on tracks very similar to Infineon. We just never went to the West Coast. We stayed on the East Coast road courses like Road Atlanta, VIR (Virginia International Raceway) - tracks like that. But seeing those tracks at a young age, I always liked road racing.
"That was as much about it as anything as having an attitude about, 'Hey, this is different than stock car racing, but let's go ahead and have some fun.'"
Rudd has had plenty of fun at Infineon Raceway, the site of Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350. His most recent Nextel Cup victory came there in 2002 when he was driving for Robert Yates Racing, and in his last race at the track just northeast of San Francisco he finished second in 2005 in the Wood Bros.' No. 21 Ford.
After taking the 2006 season off, Rudd is back with the Yates team and will be on many short lists of favorites this weekend in the No. 88 Ford.
Rudd, however, said he thinks it's difficult to pin that role on anyone this weekend.
"The Car of Tomorrow is a new variable in the equation," Rudd said. Indeed, NASCAR's new car will make its road racing debut this weekend, and in every race it has been used on an oval, a Hendrick Motorsports-owned Chevrolet has won.
"As far as picking a favorite, I would just go back and look at the last couple of previous winners," Rudd said. Since 1998, only Jeff Gordon, Rudd, Robby Gordon and Tony Stewart have won here, with Jeff Gordon winning five times and Stewart doing it twice.
"I would hate to go there and wager money on a favorite out there just because you've got too many variables," Rudd said. "I think anybody, even the guys that are used to winning out there, it's going to be hard to predict wins because the Car of Tomorrow is different from what they normally run, so they can't just roll out their old setups and roll out their old cars that they sort of pushed aside and brought out twice a year. That car doesn't exist now. Guys are going with different equipment than they've run ever."
Rudd said he believes his team certainly has the chance for a good weekend.
His team tested its new car at VIR for two days, then made some changes and went back for another day. That, Rudd said, is the only way teams are going to get a better handle on what the new car needs at any track.
"The only way to get from behind that eight ball is to test, test, test and to come up with programs where you just don't go out there to run laps," he said. "You come to the racetrack in a test mode and are prepared to make a lot of geometry changes to your chassis and be creative and be open-minded. But that means a lot of test time.
"We've got three days at VIR, which doesn't guarantee you success at Infineon, but we ran well the last time. We went through a lot of built-in geometry changes and found some things that we liked, that we think will work for us at Infineon, but we really won't know until we get on the track."
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