TIMOTHY PETERS, No. 17 Nelson Toyota Tundra, Red Horse Racing Do you enjoy racing at Martinsville? “I always love coming back to Martinsville, especially now after last fall they offered one of these (grandfather clock) to the winner. We were able to get one for the late model race so it’s time to add another one to the collection. Being home, I’m more in my element here because these are the type tracks that I grew up on. We run well everywhere we go. Mike Smith (Martinsville Speedway PR director) and Clay Campbell (Martinsville Speedway track president) and everyone here at Martinsville Speedway put on a great show. The trucks are just fun here. It’s Saturday night shoot out — door handle to door handle and bumper to bumper.”
What was it like to visit your high school this week? “Earlier this week I got to go back to my high school — that was just cool by itself. To get to go back and see some of my teachers that I had when I was going to school there and just to see the changes. To go in the shop class to the welding and the auto body and auto mechanics classes — it was cool just to see how things have changed, but to walk the halls again. I sent everybody I visited an email back that I always wanted to come back to school and finally got the opportunity.”
What is the most important thing about racing at Martinsville? “Strategy plays a lot. The crew chief has got to be constantly thinking. Pit road is very critical now and it’s hard to pass so I think that’s the biggest thing that plays into it that people sometimes don’t understand. Obviously, it’s hard to pass so the thing that is understandable is moving people out of the way and beating and banging.”
What is the fast way around Martinsville? “Bobby Hamilton in my opinion taught me a lot about here. Easy in, hard off. Sometimes, well — I still have myself driving in too deep, locking up the left front, staying off the curb. So, the biggest thing is turn one and two, three and four. They have a lot of grip due to the concrete that we have here and being that they extended it an extra 50 feet it’s always grippy. The fast way around here is easy in and hard off.”
What did the people at the school think had changed the most about you and what did you think had changed the most? “A lot of the staff had changed, but as far as appearance everything stayed the same. My carpentry teacher, he came to me and said, ‘Man, you haven’t changed since the day you walked out of here.’ I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I just said, ‘Thank you.’ Everything was the same. The classes — I was real big on the shop stuff. Anything that could get you out of the classroom and work on I was big on that. I made sure to go back and look at all of the classes and nothing has changed. Maybe a fresh coat of paint. The auto body teacher now is now Daryl Carver. He races Late Model stocks. I went to school with him and he graduated in 1996 and I went in 1998, and now he’s been the auto body teacher for nine years. It was cool to see that. I guess the coolest part about the whole trip is one of the kids asked to come out and he got a hall pass to come and see me. I got him a hat — a nice Toyota hat — and we signed him a picture and then they asked me to sign his hall pass and the highlight was I put, ‘He’s okay,’ and then signed my name to give it back to his teacher so that was pretty cool.”
Is it hard to maintain your momentum when you go through breaks in the season? “It’s hard, but we got a great core of guys in the shop from the crew chief all the way to the mechanic shop to the fab shop to the suspension side. Obviously, we like to go test but sometimes off-track testing not at the same facility or on a different tire you are just kind of shooting in the dark. Butch Hylton (crew chief) came onboard and our program has stepped up. Obviously, the results just started showing for it at Darlington but the first three races we haven’t ran bad. We’ve ran really well in my opinion. Phoenix was probably the best that we should’ve ran, but the driver kind of put himself in a bad situation — I put myself in a bad situation and just messed up the whole night. The way the points are now our results aren’t that bad because a lot of veterans have had bad luck at Daytona and Phoenix and I think that they’re going to fight with that all through the season.”
