Rusty Wallace will get back behind the wheel of the Blue Deuce this week at Daytona International Speedway.
Wallace will drive a “retro” No. 2 Ford Fusion at the 2.5 mile superspeedway when Pre-Season Thunder gets underway. Wallace and long-time sponsor Miller Lite are celebrating the 25th anniversary of his 1989 Winston Cup championship as well as the 40th anniversary of Miller Lite.
“It all started at Homestead I was standing between the 48 (Jimmie Johnson) and 2 (Brad Keselowski) cars joking around and those guys were egging me on to get back in a car and when Brad got wind of it, he called me up two weeks later and was serious about it and Roger (Penske) was all for it,” the 57-year-old Wallace told NASCAR.com. “Everyone in the world has been on me to test. ‘Why haven’t you been back in a car?’ This here kind of got me.
“It’s going to be hard not to have a big ol’ smile all day Thursday.”
Wallace won 55 races in NASCAR but all before the General 6 car.
“I think it’ll help my TV stuff and I’ll have a more in-depth knowledge of what the car feels like,” Wallace said. “I don’t know of any other analysts that are doing this right now. … I honestly pride myself in the information I give fans on the air.
Wallace will make some single car runs but is not expected to draft.
“Brad will shake it down a couple runs then I’ll get in the car and I just may stay in it the rest of the day,” Wallace said with a laugh.
Not to be outdone, JR Motorsports will place Bill Elliott in a Nationwide Series car along with his son Chase Elliott.
“It’s probably a one-time (arrangement),’’ said Kelley Earnhardt Miller, general manager of JR Motorsports. “The Nationwide Series actually doesn’t do a lot of testing, so we don’t have the opportunity to ask a lot of people to test. Just being that this is restrictor‑plate testing, Bill is a great choice to do that for us. We’ll definitely call him again if we need him, but I don’t see any major plans or whatnot just based on our limited testing resources there.’’
