Subscibe to our feedSame Strategy, Steady Pace Guide Team 48 Through Second Half of Season
Since NASCAR started the Chase for Championship in 2004, no team has done better at rising to the challenge than the No. 48 Lowe’s crew and driver Jimmie Johnson. They’ve contended for the title right down to the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway all five years, and they’ve won the last three straight.
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In 2006, the team’s first championship season, they won one race and had an average finish of 10.8 in the 10 Chase races. The next year they set the gold standard with four wins and an average finish of fifth. Last year, they were just a tick off that pace with three wins and an average finish of 5.7 in the Chase.
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But to hear the key players tell it, there’s no magic formula for preparing for the Chase. It’s just a continuation of the strategy they employ in the 26-race regular season, only there’s more pressure on them and more potential reward at the end.
“We don’t prepare any harder for the Chase, no more or no less,” said crew chief Chad Knaus, explaining that the strategies they use in the regular season don’t significantly change for the “playoffs”.
In today’s NASCAR world, on-track testing is banned at tracks that host major NASCAR divisions, so teams must do most of their testing at the shop through electronic simulations and such. The data gathered and set-ups learned during the year become critical parts of Chase preparation and strategy.
Even so, Knaus said he’s just as likely to try new set-ups or strategies in the Chase as he would in any other race, especially since changing tires and track conditions make a pre-planned set-up impractical.
“We’re always trying stuff,” he said. “We don’t go to an event without trying something new. We do what we can to make the car finish first,” he said. “We’ve never started a race thinking we’re going to run 15th.”
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Under the schedule in place at Hendrick Motorsports, car preparation for races begins as early as four months out. In mid-May, the crew was already working on the cars that will be run in September.
Ron Malec, car chief on the No. 48 Lowe's team, said the team is building a couple of new cars to be used in the Chase this year. With NASCAR's ban on testing, fine-tuning those cars can pose a problem.
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“You just have to take a fresh bullet out there and hope it’s good,” he said.
The team can get around that testing ban, in a way, by running a new car built primarily for the Chase in a mid-season race.
“We’ll probably run them once or twice before the end of the regular season,” he said. “We might run one at Michigan in August and shake it down in an actual race. But those cars will be fresh for the Chase. We build new cars throughout year then we’re ready for the Chase with our newest, greatest stuff.
“We get established in points and use the time to test new set-ups,” Malec said. “We’re more focused on trying to get better, but it doesn’t always show on the race track.”
Greg Ives, the team’s engineer, said he spends the season gathering data that will be helpful in the final 10 races.
“By the time you get there, you’ve been to every track except Homestead and Kansas,” he said. “You know what you want to run and what Jimmie is looking for with adjustments. If he’s tight or loose we have a shock or bump stop that helps that or a spring and sway bar combination that helps in that area.”
But the last 10 aren’t just races on the schedule. The championship and all it brings are on the line.
“The first 26 races are a catalogue of information on how to adjust the race car for your driver,” Ives said. “In the last 10, it’s ‘this is the package we’re going to run and how we’re going to adjust to it.’ It’s easier as far as the driver’s understanding, the crew chief’s understanding and what we’re expecting, but it’s harder because everybody else has that advantage, and there’s more pressure.”
But make no mistake, when it comes time for the Chase, the expectations are that there will be few mistakes made at the shop or at the track.
“Being in the Chase is the hardest,” Malec said. “You’re under a lot of pressure those 10 weeks.”