GIRL NEXT DOOR HAS NEED FOR SPEED.

Byline: TIM HADDOCK

MOTOR SPORTS

Kendra Wilkinson, one of Hugh Hefner's girlfriends on the E! reality show "The Girls Next Door," has a strategy for the Toyota Pro/Celebrity race portion of the Grand Prix of Long Beach: Stay away from the walls.

It might be a simple approach to the 10-lap charity race through the streets of Long Beach. But it's also a smart one.

"I think the walls put way more pressure on me to stay on the track," Wilkinson said. "It puts a lot more pressure on me to brake better and hit my apexes better. I feel like the walls hold me in the track more, and it puts a lot of pressure on me to do better."

Wilkinson has put more thought into this race than most people would think.

She has spent the past month practicing in Long Beach and at Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond with her fellow celebrity entrants. She knows about the hazardous hairpin turn that has cost many a Champ Car driver a chance to win.

Perhaps most importantly, she knows that patience, not speed, may be the key to winning the Pro/Celebrity race.

"I predict that a couple people are going to go wipe out in that hairpin," Wilkinson said. "So my plan is to, like, back off a little bit -- back off in that hairpin. Let them all slam into each other and take their place."

Motor sports have become Wilkinson's new love. Being a race car driver, even for a charity race against George Lucas and Robin Quivers in Toyota Scion tCs, has contributed to her new-found love. She made time to watch the ESPN broadcast of the NASCAR Busch Series race at Nashville Speedway a couple weeks ago. But she caught the race a little early, only 20 laps in, and decided she had better things to do during the day.

"I get kinda bored," Wilkinson said. "But it's fun watching for a couple laps. I like it. I love the competition. That's my favorite thing. It gets my adrenaline pumping."

Sports and competition are nothing new to Wilkinson. She played softball and soccer in high school. She said she played volleyball and basketball when she was younger. She even learned to surf.

But racing cars is a different sort of competition.

"I'm so used to like, physical activity," Wilkinson said. "I'm so used to all the ball sports. This is so different to me. It's such a challenge and I love challenge in my life."

She still plays softball, -- she's actually looking for a slow-pitch team to join -- but she said soccer was her best sport.

"I've done every single sport you can think of, and the sport I fell in love with was soccer," Wilkinson said. "It was my favorite sport ever."

As for the race, Wilkinson said she is positive she is not going to lose. She's not sure if she is going to win, but she said she won't come in last.

"I'm really good," Wilkinson said. "I don't think I'm going to win. I have a good chance of winning, but I think this year Martina Navratilova will win, 'cause she's so smart, and she did it last year."

And that was Wilkinson's biggest complaint.

"I don't think it's that fair," she said. "There are a couple people back that have done it like threetimes before, and they know the track way better than me. I've only had one chance to really practice on Long Beach, and these other people have practiced so many other times. It's not that fair to me."

Puttin' a Li'l E in Texas

Texas Motor Speedway has been the site of some memorable races for Dale Earnhardt Jr. He won the first race of his Cup career at Texas in 2000. It was also the site of his first NASCAR Busch Series win in 1998.

But it has also been a track that has earned his criticism. Earnhardt Jr. was the most vocal critic of a dip that developed between turns 1and 2 at the track.

Track officials listened to Earnhardt Jr. and his supporters in the garage and fixed the dip in time for this weekend's NASCAR races at Texas Motor Speedway.

"I'm happy about it, because the racing at this place gets better every time we come back, but that bump was so big it would upset your car if you weren't running right down on the white line," said Earnhardt Jr., driver of the No. 8 Chevrolet for Dale Earnhardt Inc. "It made it really hard to run side-by-side with anyone on that end of the track. It's not something that happens only at Texas -- almost all of the tracks we go to have some major bumps over the tunnels that run under the track. The soil settles, and you have issues. But, this one was pretty big, and I spoke up because I felt like if they fixed it, we could really see two- and three-wide racing through that end of the track."

Earnhardt Jr. finished 12th in last year's race at Texas Motor Speedway. He has threetop-five and seven top-10 finishes in nine races at the track.

He has also climbed back in Chase contention with a pair of top-10 finishes at Martinsville Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway. He is 11th in points after starting the season with two DNFs, at Daytona International Speedway and California Speedway.

"A lot of people made too much of the start of the season, but there was never concern or panic in the team," Earnhardt Jr. said. "We knew we had run really well before we ran into problems, so we knew the finishes would come."

At the same time, Earnhardt Jr. said his team is not getting too excited about the past two top 10s.

"It's a long, long season, and we believe that's where we should be," Earnhardt Jr. said. "It's all matter-of-fact, it's expected inside the team, but we're not going to sit back and chill. We need to keep working on getting there every week."

Earnhardt Jr. said he is bringing his favorite car to Texas. It's the same car he had at California Speedway, where he blew an engine and spun out twice during the race.

"Let's see if we can make it three top-10s and two top-fives in a row," Earnhardt Jr. said. "The only time we've finished worse than 12th at Texas was when I crashed with a lapped car -- and we would have easily been a top-five car that afternoon, so history is on our side."

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1) Kendra Wilkinson of "The Girls Next Door" will race this weekend in Long Beach.

Jonathan Alcorn/Toyota Motorsports

(2) EARNHARDT

Box:

(1) THIS WEEK

- The Associated Press

(2) Etc.