By Ron Felix

April 27, 2003

It's been two years since Rusty Wallace tasted victory. His last win came on April 29th, 2001 at the California Speedway only a few races after his good friend Dale Earnhardt was killed at Daytona. Wallace saluted Earnhardt on that day, Earnhardt's birthday, with a "Polish" victory lap and a No. 3 flag held out the drivers side window. At the time it was a tearful scene.

It's 24 months later and Wallace has been scratching his head wondering why his team can't win. For 71 races Wallace, for whatever reason, hasn't been able to put his Dodge Interpid into the winners circle and now he's about as hungry as a driver can get.

"This is the last race I won two years ago," says Wallace, "I've got a great car, and I can't wait to try to win it again. I think I can do it. Bill Elliott went through a four-year slump and Earnhardt went through a year and a half slump. You just keep on doing it and it'll pop. I'm not in a performance slump. I'm in a 'not having won' slump. A lot of people get that confused. A lot of people say, 'I'd love to have the year you're having.' And I say, 'my year stinks compared to my standards.' I want to win. As soon as we win, it'll make a lot of people happy, that's for sure.

The switch to Dodge for the Penske team this season may have been a factor for Wallace but his teammate, Ryan Newman, has proven that the switch wasn't that difficult to overcome. The change in rules from NASCAR may have been a bigger reason for the struggles.

"The Ford guys were really good to us, but the Dodge guys are really, really good to us," explains Wallace, "It wasn't much of a learning curve switching to Dodge. It's just that things were different, different body locations this year. The brand and the engine didn't really have a big effect. It was just the body location. We had different tire combinations and another year at the track with things constantly changing."

It's difficult for any driver to suddenly quit winning. Mark Martin constantly reminds us that a driver never knows when his last victory will come. All drivers eventually go through it, all drivers eventually have a last win.

"I've never gone two years in my life without winning in any series," says Wallace, "Because of that, you've got to look around and make sure you've got the right support staff behind you and make sure you've got the right people behind you and make sure everybody is doing the job. The sponsors don't want to hear anything else. They want to win."

"Bill Wilburn (crew chief) and I are working as good as we can. He's feeling the pressure like I am. He doesn't like hearing that he's the only crew chief I've ever had that I haven't won with. There's pressure on him, and there's pressure on me to make sure I keep making the right decisions. I think he is the right decision. I think the competition has changed that much and it's that much tougher to win. The first thing I told him when he came on board was that I wanted first-class pit stops. Last year he got a C on that. This year he's getting an A. Bill made a guarantee the first of the year that we'd win this season. I hope he's right."

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