Waltrip gains momentum after five top-10 finishes

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - After five races this year, Michael Waltrip was 38th in points and "in dire straights."

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But in the past six races, he's been one of the hottest drivers on the Nextel Cup Series.

"You average those together and we're 18th in points," said the outside pole sitter for tonight's Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

Waltrip knows it will take the same kind of finishes in the next two months if he's going to be part of the "Chase for the Championship." He's 281 points away from 10th-place Kevin Harvick, but compared to the deficit he's already erased, a spot in the top 10 is within reach.

NASCAR's new championship formula allows the top 10 drivers after 26 races - and anyone within 400 points of the series leader - to compete for the championship in the final 10 races.

He was 682 points behind and in 38th place in the standings after the race at Darlington, S.C., and that's when he started his slow, yet methodical climb back to respectability. That rally gained speed in the past six races with five top-10 finishes. And even with a wreck at Pocono, Pa., that led to a 33rd-place finish last month, only three drivers - Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Elliott Sadler - have collected more points in the past six races.

Things usually come easy for Waltrip at Daytona. No matter how bad it seems at every other racetrack, Waltrip usually finds a way to run up front at the 2.5-mile speedway. Three of his four career victories have come at Daytona, including the Daytona 500 in 2001 and 2003 and the Pepsi 400 in 2002.

"I would venture to say that because of our equipment, we look a lot smarter than we are," Waltrip said. "I will tell you that I think I can draft better than anyone out there. I think that I know how to put my car in places and set my car up that lets me take advantage of such a great race car."

Tonight's race (7:30 p.m., FOX-Ch. 54) will feature restrictor plates. Those devices reduce speeds by 40 mph to keep them from becoming airborne during a crash. But since the cars are so under-powered, drivers now have to rely on aerodynamics to find speed. That means cars running in a nose-to-tail group called a "draft" can run faster than a single car because a group of cars can divide the wind resistance.

When it comes to drafting, two names generally emerge atop the leaderboard: Waltrip and his teammate, Earnhardt Jr.

Waltrip and Earnhardt Jr. have won 10 of the past 14 restrictor plate races.

Earnhardt Jr. will start tonight's race from fifth place.

Jeff Gordon, who won the last restrictor plate race at Talladega, Ala., will start on the pole.

Reach Don Coble at doncoble@bellsouth.net.