RIDGEWAY, VA :: Jamey Caudill is always a pre-race favorite at Martinsville Speedway ahead of the October classic and for good reason. He won the race in 2003 and has scored five top-five finishes in the Valley Star Credit Union 300 but he has failed to advance to the feature race the last two races.
This year, Caudill is hoping to rebound and re-emerge as a contender at Martinsville, something he intended to do last year before getting taken out on the first lap of the first heat race. Caudill expects to be competitive in Sunday’s race.
“If we didn’t think we could, we wouldn’t be coming,” Caudill said. “It’s Martinsville and we’re coming back this year just like we showed up last year which is to come and be as good as you can be. We’ll come back and put last year behind us and go at it again. Things happen. They’ll happen again this year, hopefully not to us. It’s Martinsville. Every year, we all come back.”
Caudill is a veteran of the sport and has attempted to make the field for Late Model Stock Car racing’s biggest race every year since 1999. While the car has changed and the track has changed, he says it has always been competitive and that making the field alone is a challenge.
“That race has always been tough,” Caudill explained. “It’s the toughest race that you’re going to run and try to compete for a win. Everybody, all your best Late Models are going to be there. It’s just tough. There are a lot of things out of your control that plays into the outcome of the race.
“You’ve got to run all day, keep fenders on it and be in position at the end of the day to be in position to contend. It’s easy to take yourself out of the race and I’ve done that before. Tough race to win and has been tough since they started having it. It’s by far our biggest race and everybody wants to win it so all the good cars show for it. That’s what they’re there for.”
Caudill reflected on his win in the 2003 Martinsville Late Model race, which he considers one of the biggest wins of his Late Model Stock Car racing career.
“I don’t know, we’ve won, I think it was $15,000 to win,” Caudill recalled. “We won a $15k at Southhampton. We’ve won all the big races but that was a pretty special race. I wasn’t even going that year. We decided to sit out. A week before the race, Charlie Long decided to run the Truck race and they asked me to run the Late Model race. It had my name taped up on the car. We tested well, ran well all weekend. Not to go and a week and a half later to win it, pretty big win there.
“We’ve been in contention to win since then. We ran second two or three times and third a time or two. We’ve been real close. We just haven’t been able to win it since 2003. It’s hard to run top five there more or less win it. It’s just tough.”
With Martinsville comes the thrill and adrenaline of victory as well as the crushing agony and disappointment that accompanies defeat. Caudill has experienced both. Last year, with a brand new car, Caudill did not get the chance to even complete a single green flag lap.
“It was disappointing,” Caudill commented. “We had a good car. The biggest disappointment of it all was that we didn’t get to race and see how good we were. That’s what aggravates me more than getting wrecked. If we had started 10th in the race and got torn up, I could say we would have had anything to contend. I feel like we had a car good enough to run up front all day. For it to happen that early, that’s the disappointing part. It’s disappointing losing a car.”
Last year is in the past for the veteran racer from Four Oaks, North Carolina. This year, the driver who has won four championships at Southern National Motorsports Park and scored more wins than any other driver in the UARA-STARS touring series is optimistic that he will have a better car.
“You don’t show up with good cars every year and when you do, you want to take advantage of it and I feel like we missed out last year. We’ll show up looking just like we did last year. I felt better about the car in the test this year. It’s a new weekend but we’ll be pretty good when we show up.”
If Jamey Caudill scores his second Martinsville win on Sunday, it would be even better than the first time for him.
“I want to win it in our stuff, in our car,” Caudill explained. “We’ve been really good in our car there. I don’t remember what year it was, maybe the year after we won, we had everybody covered and we got in the back of somebody and the hood got up over the nose and they black flagged us leading the race. That got away from us. Breaking, blowing up or tearing up, we had everyone covered.
“Its hard. It takes more than a good car or the best car to win. Everybody’s tough when they get there. It’s going to be hard to run up front all day, none the less win.”
One big change in this year’s race is the elimination of the competition caution that is traditionally waved with 10 laps to go in the race. Caudill praised the change, saying it will save team owners money.
“I don’t know. We’ll take it as it comes and see. Doing away with the 10 laps at the end of ther ace, that’s going to save some car owners a lot of money. My biggest thing with the whole race, I don’t care what format as long as everybody knows going in and we make the most out of it that we can.”
However, there is one more change Caudill would like to see.
“The heat race issue, I don’t like. They took a lot away from the race when they quit locking he top 20 in qualifying. When you show up on Saturday against 80 or 90 cars and you have two laps to get it done, you either get it done or don’t. When you leave on Saturday top 20, you know you’ll start that feature. It makes that whole deal sweeter. Now, you show up on Sunday morning and only the top two know they’re going to race. I don’t like the heat race format.”
So far this season, Caudill has raced in eight Championship Auto Racing Series (CARS) Late Model Stock Tour races where he has scored five top-five and six top-10 finishes. Sunday’s Valley Star Credit Union 300 will be Caudill’s 17th Martinsville attempt.
