Race Weekend Central

Kenny Wallace Driver Diary: I Love Being a Racecar Driver

Here’s what I want to make sure everybody knows. I’m a racecar driver. All of this started with the weekends at the racetrack. I have 100 people come up and tell me how good I did, but there were always that one or two people who asked me if I was still racing. I said to myself, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ It bothered me a little bit. I tried hard not to let things bother me that are negative. I work really hard at staying positive, although I will admit it’s a lot of work.

So after the races were over at Bristol, I ended up back up to ninth in the points, and I thought that this is the perfect time to remind everybody that I’m still a racecar driver. In some odd way, I’ve felt like I needed to remind some people. It really got me personally. So I’ve reached out to some of my media friends and reminded everybody that I’m still racing. I love being a racecar driver. It’s not up for debate whether I should race or quit racing or just do one thing. The fact of the matter is that I simply do two.

It’s just so easy to do. I go to the racetrack, and I qualify and practice and race on Friday and Saturday. Then I simply go to sleep in my motorhome on Saturday night and then I wake up at the racetrack. Then I just go on stage and do TV. It’s just that easy. I figured that I would share that with everybody.

Bristol is a track that has always been good to me. I grew up running tracks like Winchester, Ind. [and] Salem, Ind., so it seems like I really adapted to Bristol. So I went there with a positive mental attitude. We didn’t have the qualifying run I wanted. It was horrible – I think it was the worst I’ve ever qualified in my life at Bristol. I qualified 35th. I didn’t think we were that slow.

When they dropped the green flag, I started passing a car a lap. I got to thinking, ‘How did I qualify so bad?’ It didn’t feel that bad when I qualified. We ended up having a good 14th-place finish. I moved up to ninth in the points. It was a fun weekend.

If the rain stays away, I’ll be running my dirt car this Friday night in Paducah, Ky. Then I’ll be running Saturday at Kenny Schrader’s racetrack in Pevely, Mo. I’m also looking forward to baseball season. Kim and I are leaving straight from Texas to go to St. Louis. We have tickets to the first three Cardinals games at Busch Stadium and we’re really looking forward to that!

About the author

Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.

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