Testing, Testing...

   Off-season testing among NASCAR's Nextel Cup Series teams will begin with furious intensity during the next few days, mainly at Daytona International Speedway in Florida.

   It's tedious--and often boring--work for both the drivers and their crews.

   Also dangerous.

   One of NASCAR's most promising drivers lost his life while testing at Daytona on Jan. 5, 1965.

   

   That was Texan Billy Wade, the 1963 rookie of the year with 14 top 10 finishes in 31 races.

   Driving for legendary South Carolina team owner Bud Moore, Wade had won four races--all consecutively--during the 1964 season.  In 34 starts he posted seven other top five finishes and wound up in the top 10 a whopping 19 times overall.  He took five poles.

   Some rated the 35-year-old driver a solid threat for the '65 championship in what NASCAR then called its Grand National Division.

   But it wasn't to be.

   Wade didn't survive a hard crash at the 2.5-mile Daytona track, leaving a wife and two young daughters.

   Another successful driver, Jimmy Pardue, was killed while testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1964.

   However, Pardue died in a crash on Sept. 22 while preparing for Charlotte's National 400, not in a pre-season shakedown.

   A tire failed on his car and Pardue, who hailed from North Wilkesboro, N.C., sailed over the Turn Four railing and plummeted 90 feet downward to the bottom of the banking.

   Like Wade, Pardue had started to fare well.

   He had won a race in each of the '62 and '63 seasons.

   Several drivers have suffered injuries during crashes while testing, including Hall Of Famer Buddy Baker, who blew a tire, hit the wall and sustained a broken leg during the late 1960s while running  a pre-season tire test at Daytona.

   "It's no fun, but you've got to do it," said Waddell Wilson, who recently recieved the N.C. Auto Racing Hall Of Fame's prestigious "Golden Wrench Award."  Wilson started going to testing at Daytona in the 1960s with the storied Holman & Moody operation and continued doing so for more than 40 years while serving as an engine builder and then crew chief with various teams.  "If you don't, then you're behind for the season-opening Daytona, our sport's biggest race.   

   "Through the years, me and my teammates often found ourselves just sitting there in the garage area, bored as could be," said Wilson.  "The problem was that moisture from overnight dew had left the track too slick for cars to go on it.  Lots of times it would be noon before the track dryed off.

   "I remember thinking, 'This is just wasted time that I could be applying to getting something accomplished back at the shop.'

   "Another frustration was the long lines of cars waiting to get on the track.  This is the thing I recall frustrating the drivers more than anything else.  They're buckled in and ready to go, but NASCAR will let only three or four cars on the track at a time.  And there are maybe 20 cars in the line on pit road.

   "The drivers run three or four laps, then it's back into the garage.  And they're complaining, 'I'm spending all this time down here for THIS!?"

   Mike Hill, who spent many years with the Junior Johnson-owned operation that won six championships, offered another thought from all the seasons he went to pre-season tests.

   "Trying to get a clean lap in was your goal, but it often was--and remains--hard to do," said Hill, who now works for Evernham Motorsports.  "If there was another car on the same straightaway as your car, it created a draft, so you really couldn't tell what you had."

   Hill chuckled.

   "If your team's car came off the truck fast, watching the grass grow while you were at Daytona or Talladega testing wasn't too bad," he said.  "But if you're not fast right away, then the hurry-up-and-waiting trying to get fast was very, very tough.  Rain always made you wish you were somewhere else, and it rains a lot at Daytona in January. "

  The late seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt had a way of beating the boredom and tedium of winter days at Daytona (and sometimes Talladega).

   So he could go hunting, Earnhardt had his team owner, Richard Childress, hire veteran driver Dave Marcis to do the testing for them.