Milka Duno isn’t coming to Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway this weekend completely blindsided.
“I know it’s not going to be easy,” said Duno. “I never expected it to be easy here (at Bristol) or in the Nationwide Series. I just have to work hard. The idea wasn’t to come to Bristol first, we were planning to start a little earlier, but for different reasons we started a little bit late, so we’re here.”
The former IndyCar driver and most recent, a competitor in the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards will attempt to make her NASCAR Nationwide Series debut Friday night in “Thunder Valley.”
Tall task for an inexperienced driver, but yet an experienced team.
Despite the circumstances, Duno will try to compete at a place the carries the characteristics of being brutal on rookies and even veterans too at times. With the tight, surveyor belt like train, it’s often know that the “World’s Fastest Half Mile” is a place where there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
But the Caracas, Venezuela native is leaning on her RAB Racing team led by crew chief Keith Hinkein and consultant Bruce Cook to help her find the speed that she needs to not only compete in the Food City 300, but be competitive.
Through Thursday’s practice sessions, Duno made progress. But, there’s still more work to do.
In the first practice session, she posted the 41st quickest lap at 16.781 seconds or 114.344 miles per hour. A half-hour later, Duno in her No. 29 CanTV Toyota Camry found six-tenths of a second to land herself 36th quickest fastest overall. That lap would have put her into the starting grid, but the team isn’t amaurotic to know they can let their guard down.
Qualifying will be a different beast and Duno, who resides in Miami Florida knows she’ll have to find more speed in order to have a shot at a starting berth.
“I hope, our mission in practice was to improve our time and we did that, it was a good practice,” Duno mentioned. “The car is good. We made a few changes and I’m learning with Bruce (Cook) a lot, because you know it’s my first time at Bristol, first time with the car. I have so many things to learn, but I’m a fast learner.
“It’s a wild place. My ARCA experience at Salem Speedway and Winchester Speedway helped me to handle this. Everything I learned in ARCA helped me for this. Everything happens faster though. We have to go fast to qualify, so we’ll try and do that.”
Despite some criticism for bringing a rookie driver in her debut to one of the most demanding racetracks both physically and mentally on a driver, RAB Racing team owner Robby Benton defended his team actions on the decision to bring Duno to the 0.566-mile oval.
“There’s a lot of reasons,” he mentioned. “There’s several other races she wants to run and she has to go through NASCAR’s qualification process. She’s clear to go to a mile right now, the next race for her will be Dover and we’re fitting some things around her schedule and the commitments she has, so we looked at it said this is a half-mile, and it’s a hard place to come, but it’s where we’ve got to go to get her to where we feel like she’s prepared to go to Dover, which I think is as hard or harder than here.
“There’s not necessarily a good track to go to when you just jump right into the Nationwide Series. I think a lot of people have opinions on where they think the hard place to go is and where it isn’t. But, this is just what fit when we got the sponsorship deal done, this is the first opportunity we felt like we had to come and bring her and get her on track where she could run. She comes from the ARCA Series and some of her better runs came at Salem and Winchester. She seems to be comfortable at the high-banked half miles and we felt like we’d bring her. There’s not a place that I felt like we could have taken her that I would have felt any better about.”
But, how did Benton feel about her progression during practice where she turned 159 laps combined?
“We were happy with the way things ended up,” he said. “It’s a tall order to bring someone here who’s not only a rookie to this series, but a rookie to this track. Our goal was to get her as many laps as we could (in practice), make some changes let her feel what the changes did and hopefully at the end of the day have enough speed to where we feel like we could come back and qualify for the race.”
In the past, Duno has been carped by some of her competitors for her inconsistent speed and movement on track, but several NASCAR Nationwide Series drivers noted that they watched Duno during practice and didn’t see any immediate cause for concern.
“I watched her from pit road,” said Nationwide driver Jeremy Clements. “She got faster as time went on, so that’s good. “I didn’t get a chance to be on the track with her at the same time, but when cars were catching her, she was respectful and gave them room and that’s what she’ll need to do to survive, if she qualifies. If she’s respectful in the race, she’ll be fine.”
Jeffrey Earnhardt agrees.
“It’s going to be cool to see her make it, if she can make it in the race, if she can lay that lap down,” he said. “I give her props for being in a male-dominated sport. It will be good for the sport. Hell, look at all the fans that Danica (Patrick) has, Milka can do the same thing (I think). I don’t have any apprehension of racing with her, I think she’ll be respectful, but hell yeah, if she qualifies she has every reason to be out there and it would be cool to see.”
Qualifying will be a new battle for Duno and her No. 29 team. They know the challenge that lies ahead of them. And if they make one of the toughest fields of the season, Duno will be responsible for her actions during the 300-lap race and she knows it.
“In the first race, you have to finish the race and do the best that you can, because you are learning lap-by-lap,” she added. “But, before we concentrate on the race, we must first qualify for the race.”
In addition to Bristol and Dover, Duno is scheduled to compete in a minimum of three others to-be-announced events this season with the motion of running for NASCAR Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year honors in 2015.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
