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Friday, February 14, 2003

By Chris Dolack, Special to the Post-Gazette

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Drivers are known for being calm, but either Dave Blaney is an award-winning actor or he had been sedated yesterday. An hour before he was to take his place near the back of a Daytona 500 qualifying race, a race in which he desperately had to do well in to have any chance of making the main event Sunday, Blaney couldn't have been more at ease.

Maybe he knew something. Even though his Ford stalled in the pits, relegating him to a 21st-place finish in the second of the Twin 125 qualifying races, Blaney will start the Daytona 500 from a provisional 39th-place spot on the 43-car grid, based on points his team earned last season. In front-row qualifying Monday, his time around the 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway was 49.541 seconds, which left him in 44th position and needing a lot of help to make the race. Only the top 15 from each of the Twin 125s and the next fastest eight cars were guaranteed starting positions.

"We were kind of stuck on the high side. We could run pretty good up there, I just couldn't make up any ground," said Blaney, a Hartford, Ohio, native who is entering his second year of ownership at Sharon Speedway near Youngstown. "It quit running leaving the pits, whether I didn't slip the clutch enough or I ran out of gas, I don't know. It just kind of sputtered and quit. It wasn't a big deal but I couldn't get it refired. It wouldn't restart. That killed us."

Fortunately for Blaney, starting position at Daytona isn't as important as it might be at a smaller track. On the high-banked and high-speed trioval where engines are outfitted with horsepower-limiting restrictor plates and cars shuffle back and forth on every lap, Blaney figures cars from the back could be in the top 10 within 50 laps. He will need to keep that positive outlook early in the Winston Cup season because his Jasper Motorsports team features a new crew chief, Robert Barker, and new Fords, where the bodies must conform to a common template with the other three makes in NASCAR. The team finished 19th in the standings last season.

"On paper, I think we improved our team in a lot of different areas, but you never know until you get out and race for it," said Blaney, a former sprint car champion at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver as well as with the World of Outlaws.

It's those roots on the dirt tracks around Western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio that help Blaney remain level-headed in a setting as big as the one for the Daytona 500. Not that he ever thinks about it.

"I don't know how to explain it. It's weird," he said. "You get here and there's a lot of people and there's a lot of money here and a lot of hoopla around the sport, but it comes down to you're still racing. I'm still racing 40 other guys here trying to beat them. That's what we're into all the time is how we can improve our race team and get our race cars faster compared to everybody else. For whatever reason, I still focus on that side and not all the other stuff."

His father, Lou, a legendary driver who races big-block modifieds on the dirt tracks around Pittsburgh, will oversee the operation of Sharon Speedway as he did last year. The schedule will feature two World of Outlaws races (May 30 and July 30). He also plans to have Tony Stewart there in June and, for July, has added an AMA motorcycle race and a UDTRA-sanctioned dirt late model race.

"When we go back to Sharon, there's always a bunch of people that come out," said Blaney, who plans on being there at least three times during the season.

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NOTE -- All three of Chip Ganassi's drivers qualified for the Daytona 500. In the first of the Twin 125s, Sterling Marlin cruised to a fourth-place finish while rookies Jamie McMurray and Casey Mears had to scramble to make the race, with McMurrary 10th and Mears claiming the 15th and final transfer spot. "It's nice to have three cars, but you got to have three cars in the race. That's what we're pumped about," Ganassi said.