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Golden Corral 500 Advance
Casey Mears and No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge at
Atlanta Motor Speedway, March 19

Texaco/Havoline Team Facts:

• Standings: Casey Mears and the Texaco/Havoline team slipped to fourth in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup standings despite capturing their third top-10 finish of the season last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Mears is having a career-best start to the 2006 season with Donnie Wingo and the Texaco/Havoline team and sits solidly in the top 10, just 86 points behind the leader.



• Three in a row: Mears has scored top-10 finishes in five of the last six NASCAR NEXTEL Cup races he has competed in, including two of the final three races of the 2005 season. He finished ninth in Las Vegas, seventh in California, second at Daytona, fifth at Homestead and fourth at Texas. Mears is one of only two drivers this season to score top-10 finishes in all three events.



• Atlanta: Mears will be making his seventh NEXTEL Cup start at the 1.54-mile speedway. He led 37 laps in the March event last season before the engine expired with just 23 laps remaining in the race. This weekend he will look to continue his top-10 streak of 2006 and earn his first top 10 at Atlanta. His best finish is 13th,which he did in October of 2004.



• Two shots: Mears will attempt to make his second NASCAR Busch Series start this season in the No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Mears also ran an in-house car in the California Busch event, but his race was cut short due to an electrical failure.



• Chassis: Crew chief Donnie Wingo and the Texaco/Havoline team will take chassis #607 for this weekend's Golden Corral 500 in Atlanta. This is a new chassis in the team's stable and will make its debut when it takes to the track on Friday.

Casey Mears Quotes:
"First of all Atlanta is a blast to drive. I love running around at the top of Atlanta Motor Speedway. There are very few tracks that are that fun to run up there. Atlanta is one of the tracks that give you a lot of options as a driver to make your car work. Even though I don't have the best finishes to back it up, it is one of my favorite tracks on the circuit.

"We are off to a great start to the season. It's not that we've had the perfect cars, but we've run clean, smart races. We haven't been making any big mistakes and the entire team is making the most of what we have each weekend. I can't say enough about Donnie and this team already."