Wallace looks for fourth win of season at favorite track

In March, he won at Bristol for the eighth time. And, considering his Winston Cup-best seven poles this year, he figures to earn a good starting position for Saturday night's goracing.com 500.

But Wallace won't be driving "Bristol," the name he gave his winning car after taking the Food City 500 five months ago. He'll seek his sixth Bristol pole Friday in a new Ford.

"A lot of people might ask, 'Why don't you just bring the car you won the spring race with?'" said Wallace, who got his 52nd career victory Sunday in Michigan. "Our answer is that this sport mandates that you keep getting better and better."

The 44-year-old driver has been doing just that, with five poles in his past 12 races. And a win Saturday night would make him the first this season with four.

But nothing would mean more to him than winning again at Bristol, which he considers his "most favorite race track of them all."

Bristol's high-banked, .533-mile concrete layout, is a replica of the short tracks Wallace spent his Saturday nights on in the early part of his career. To him, racing on a Saturday night at Bristol is like deja vu.

"It's really a throwback to where I came from and what we did in the early days in the sport, when we ran all the half-mile bullrings around the country on Saturday nights," he said. "Here we're running a half-mile short track on a Saturday night, too. And, as I've always said, the track really suits my racing style – heads up and flat out."