CHASING VICTORY: SHORT TRACK SUCCESS REQUIRES SERIOUS PREPARATION
Three tracks on the fall NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule, Richmond International Raceway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Dover International Speedway, are relatively similar in size, but they pose very different challenges to the crew charged with preparing Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 Lowe’s Chevy.
Richmond , at three-quarters of a mile, is the shortest of the three, and there the crew concentrates on brakes. Then they get a break with a relatively short 300-mile race on the nearly flat mile oval at New Hampshire in the first race in the 10-event Chase for the Sprint Cup. From there it’s on to another mile track, the Monster Mile at Dover, where things good and bad can happen in a hurry.
For car chief Ron Malec and the rest of the Team Lowe’s crew, Richmond is one of the more challenging stops. It is daytime practice and night racing. Complicating matters for them is the fact that the infield is crowded, as well as the weekend schedule.
“The schedule is really compressed,” Malec said. “You have race and qualifying practice in one three-hour session with a 30-minute break.”
That means the Team Lowe’s crew -- and lots of others -- show up at the track with the car in full race trim, with cooling ducts for the brakes and the driver in place as they would be for the race.
Then when it comes time for the brief qualifying runs, that extra equipment is removed from the car only to be immediately replaced for the race.
“It’s a big project and a big challenge for us,” Malec said. “It’s one of my least favorite times.”
Richmond also can be nerve wracking for Rich Gutierrez, who is responsible for preparing the brakes on the No. 48 Chevy as well as the No. 24 driven by Jeff Gordon. The blue and silver car is the one that worries him the most at Richmond because Johnson tends to use more brakes than the average driver.
Where fans in the stands at Richmond get a kick out of seeing the brake rotors glowing red in the turns, Gutierrez gets nervous when he sees red.
“You just hold your breath for about 300 laps,” he said.
He has reason to hold his breath. After a typical 400-lapper at Richmond, the pads on Johnson’s car, which started at about an inch thick, are worn down to about 3/16 of an inch. A little more wear and the No. 48 would be out of brakes.
That’s where Johnson comes in. When he senses his brakes wearing too quickly he works on cooling them for a few laps.
But that hasn’t been too big an issue. He’s won three of the last five races there.
The next week at New Hampshire brings the pressure of the first Chase race, but when it comes to car preparation, it’s a comparatively mellow affair. There’s the standard schedule. Practice is held in the daytime, in similar conditions to race day, and there’s much more working room in the garage. And the race is one of the easiest on equipment. The setups and equipment are standard for a short track, but the race is only 300 laps and it’s run in a different style than a normal short track.
“The amount of brakes you use at Loudon is a lot less,” crew chief Chad Knaus said. “You don’t charge the corners as much at Loudon as you would at Richmond, although you run a similar package there. There’s not the same amount of abuse put on the system.”
The New Hampshire event also is relatively easy on the engine.
“It’s a short race, only 300 miles,” he said. “The gear we run isn’t that over the top. Richmond is harder on the engine than Loudon.”
At New Hampshire Knaus and his crew are looking for a tuning package that allows Johnson to get up to speed as quickly as possible once he gets the car through the corner.
“You need a lot of low-end torque, because the center-of-the-corner speeds are very, very low,” Knaus said. “You need an engine with a lot of torque that will get you off the corner and propel you down the straightaway.”
Knaus feels like the team’s Dover run will be helped by their earlier experiences at the track this year.
“We were really good there in the spring and learned some things to try when we go back,” he said. “It’s another Chase race. It’s a lot about making Jimmie comfortable there, with the place being so fast. I think we made some gains there.”
Adding to the team’s confidence is the type of set-up the team runs at Dover. Even though the track is significantly smaller than an intermediate, 1.5-mile track and has a high-banked concrete surface, the team treats it like an intermediate, which is bad for the competition considering how strong the Lowe’s team is on 1.5-mile ovals.
Knaus said the Dover setup is “very similar to what you would run at Lowe’s Motor Speedway or Texas or Las Vegas. It’s a very similar racecar and very similar type set-up.”
But one big difference in Dover and an intermediate track is how quickly a good run can end in a wreck. It’s the kind of race that has Johnson on guard at all times.
“It’s like Bristol as far as staying out of trouble,” he said. “You’re covering so much ground at that race track that when something goes wrong….It’s not a mellow race by any means.”
He said that a good handling car can actually make matters worse for him in a way.
“You can get lulled into the grip of the car and the speed of the car that when something goes wrong, you can’t get stopped in time, you’re in it,” he said.
Johnson hasn’t had that problem lately. Since the spring of 2004, he’s missed a lot of wrecks en route to finishing 15th or better every race.