Around The Track: Spies like us

Before the 1981 NASCAR Winston Cup season started, a young driver was sent to Daytona to spy on a closed test to see what secrets he might be able to gather about the new car the team inside the track was putting through its paces. Here is the story of Ricky Rudd's mission.

	Ricky Rudd

It was the winter of 1980, getting ready for the '81 season. At that time, there were some options on what kind of cars to run.

Bobby Allison was at Daytona International Raceway to test. They were running the Pontiac which was supposed to be a big secret at that time. As a matter of fact, he brought it to Daytona and won the 500 with it or sat on the pole. It was really a dominant car.

I was on a scouting mission, or a spy mission. We used to have a lot of pit personnel in the shop that couldn't afford to go, so I was sent down there with a stopwatch, camera and notebook, all geared up to see how fast they were running.

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It was closed to the public, so I snuck across and climbed a fence and a tree that was on the backstretch. I climed up an oak tree on the outside of the race track. I don't think there was any backstretch grandstand there then. If there were any seats, there weren't many of them.

I was sitting up where I could see through the branches and there was a security guard that would come by about every 30 minutes. It was kind of funny -- he picked a shady spot to eat his lunch right under where I was sitting.

As I was taking notes, I knew if the guy saw me I'd have been thrown out of there. I sat up in that tree most of the day taking notes and came out with all the times and information I needed. The internet wasn't around then, so the only information you got would depend on what the speedway said. It was a closed session and they really weren't obligated to tell you anything. The times you got from the media were the speeds he was running, but we knew he was a lot better than that because they never put the car in qualifying trim and we would never have known that if we hadn't been down there watching and shooting pictures.

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Bobby was with the Harry Ranier team and I was doing it on behalf of the DiGard team . We were with the 88 car, Bill Gardner and Robert Yates ' team.

We finished third behind Richard Petty and Bobby Allison that February.

Ricky Rudd drives the No. 21 Motorcraft Racing Ford Taurus owned by Wood Brothers Racing.