Michael Waltrip will get some time to work with the No. 55 Prism Motorsports team this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway before running for the team again next month at Talladega Superspeedway.
Waltrip will step in for Michael McDowell and attempt to qualify the No. 55 into the Food City 500. Although the team is probably not going to run the entire race, this weekend will be a tune up for when Waltrip attempts to run the entire Aaron's 499 on April 25.
"I'm looking forward to it. This is all about Talladega really," Waltrip told "Sirius Speedway's" Dave Moody. "I was talking to Phil (Parsons) about Bristol and Michael McDowell has the challenge of running the last Nationwide Series practice in the Nationwide car that he will race on Saturday just prior to Cup qualifying and the cars are so different at Bristol and the pace of back and forth, one car to the other is so fierce and hectic that I asked Phil that if I maybe could come over to Bristol, qualify the car, get to know the guys a little bit so that when we go to Talladega it gives me a better chance, a better sense of comfortability, know who everybody is and understand what their roles are.
"Bristol is just going to be a warm-up for Talladega. We're gonna qualify, we'll race some. Chances are we won't finish the race but we're certainly going to make an effort to learn as much as we can while we're over there."
Last week, Waltrip announced he would be running the Talladega race with long-time sponsor Aaron's for Prism and co-owner Phil Parsons.
"We're going to go over there with Aaron's on our car sponsored by the 55th anniversary," Waltrip said. "Obviously Aaron's been a big part of MWR for many years and we want to do them a really good job."
