No driver has more wins at Martinsville Speedway in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series than Richard Petty, who won 15 times during his Hall of Fame career. As the series heads to the short track for the first time in 2012, current driver of the famed No. 43 Ford – Aric Almirola – spoke about the difficulties the half-mile oval presents and whether or not there’s added pressure for him behind the wheel of such an iconic car.
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion
AS A YOUNG DRIVER STILL TRYING TO FIGURE SOME OF THESE TRACKS OUT, WHAT MAKES MARTINSVILLE SO TOUGH?
“Martinsville is just tough, it’s tough on brakes, it’s tough on your patience, and it’s tough because a lot of times you can do everything right for 450 laps and then when everybody gets antsy on the last restart with 40 to go and you drive down into the corner and someone runs in the back of you and turns you around it’s easy to happen there. It happens all the time, so Martinsville is a place you can really be patient and really do a lot of things right and have somebody ruin your day. You can also ruin your own day very easily. You can burn up your brakes or make bad decisions on the race track, but it’s hard to keep your car in one piece there. That’s probably the one race track we go to that if you leave there without your car all torn up, you’ve probably had a good day because that means you ran up front most of the time. But if you get back anywhere from 15th to 30th and those guys are just on top of each other beating and banging, driving in over their heads into the corners, running into each other and trying to knock each other out of the way. So it’s a tough place.”
IS THERE ONE AREA YOU NEED TO WORK ON AT THAT TRACK?
“I think the biggest thing with Martinsville that I struggle with is always trying to get back to the gas too early. The corners are really, really tight, so you’ve got to be able to roll around the corner and you’ve got to be able to roll fast enough to where you can roll further around the corner and get back on the gas and kind of leave the corner straight. I always tend to get back to the gas really early trying to make up time and then my car gets really loose the longer I run, so that’s the one thing I can work on going back there is just being more patient with my race car and working harder in practice to really get a good feel for what I need in the race.”
DO YOU FEEL MARTINSVILLE IS A RHYTHM TRACK?
“For sure it is. You’ve got two drag strips and two hairpin corners. We run 500 laps there and we go through the corners 1000 times. We press the brakes as hard as we can 1000 times. We turn left 1000 times, so you’ve really got to get in a rhythm to be able to just sustain a good lap time and not blow your tires off the car.”
WHEN YOU GO TO A PLACE LIKE MARTINSVILLE, WHERE THE KING HAS THE MOST WINS, DO YOU FEEL ANY ADDED PRESSURE AS FAR AS PERFORMING AND WINNING AS DRIVER OF THE 43 FORD?
“I don’t feel any added pressure. I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform every weekend, and Richard has never been the kind of owner to really put pressure on me. He’s been great and very helpful, and kind of a cheerleader and motivator. He’s taught me some things as well, but he’s never really been like, ‘Hey man, the 43 car has won a lot of races at Martinsville. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that going.’ He’s never really been that way, so I don’t really feel any pressure as far as that’s concerned, but I expect a lot out of myself. I expect a lot out of this race team. I think we’re a very capable race team that performs at a high level, so I feel like going to Martinsville we can do a good job. A lot of things have to play into your favor to win a race there, but we just have to go there and work hard on our car and make sure our car is turning good all day and keeps good forward drive and don’t tear the fenders off of it. If we can do that, then we should have a good day.”
Ford Racing PR
