Brickyard 400 Ricky Craven Preview

MIDWEST TRANSIT & CRAVEN - READY FOR INDY

CONCORD, N C (Aug 4) Midwest Transit Racing and Driver Ricky Craven are ready to go to this weekend's Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway sporting a special graphic scheme. After testing the number 50 Chevrolet Monte Carlo July 19-20 for the mandatory General Motors test dates, the teams Crew Chief John Monsam felt the car still needed some adjustments and fine-tuning. "The test didn't produce the desired results we would have liked," said Monsam. "We just didn't run as fast as we would've like to of have. Knowing the importance of the Brickyard 400, we are going to need to make some aerodynamic and chassis changes." Monsam then decided to return to the 2.5-mile raceway the following week. Once the team was back at Indy for a second test session on July 27-28, Craven was turning consistent lap speeds of 177.214 miles per hour. "We improved quite a bit from the beginning of the first day,"said Monsam. But more importantly our preparation for this test was much better. Indianapolis is a challenging racetrack, the changes we made - put us heading in the right direction." Once the race cars were set on ready, team owners Hal Hicks and Mike Witters had a special graphic scheme placed on the car in honor of their trucking company, Midwest Transit Inc. They have owned this "Elite Fleet" since 1979. Their home base is just miles from Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Mount Carmel, Illinois. The company consists of 432 trucks, which log approximately 150,000 miles per day and primarily hauls mail for the United States government. The race car's hood will appear to have a Midwest Transit transporter truck coming out of it. The sides of the car have a slight change in the logo, and then the rear will be displaying the company phone number 1-800-LOAD-YOU.