| | By John Kernan
Special to ESPN.com
Diehard 500
|  | | Dale Earnhardt goes for three straight at Talladega on Sunday. |
I certainly hope Sunday's Diehard 500 is a better show than this year's Daytona 500. My gut says it will be, simply because Talladega Superspeedway is an easier track to drive than Daytona Motor Speedway. But it is a
restrictor-plate race, which always leaves some doubt in the mind.
Talladega, however, is a wider track. And they say, "Wider is Better."
NASCAR has also put into place some new rules, giving teams control of their
front-end shock absorbers, and also cutting down the size of the restrictor
plates. I've been told by crew chiefs that this adjustment to the plates
will take away about 20 horsepower. What that means, hopefully, is nobody
should be able to run away from anyone else. It should create one huge pack of
43 cars running side-by-side -- possibly three-wide and even four-wide at
some place on the track.
And that's hold-your-breath racing from the drop of the green until the
first caution flag -- and there will be a caution flag. You don't know
what's going to happen, but there is always that possibility of someone doing
something stupid and causing that big crash.
Now, I don't want to come off as someone who sits there and waits for the
crashes. I go to Talladega expecting to see great side-by-side action and
three-wide racing all the way to the checkered flag. And it would be fine
with me if they ran the whole race without a caution, as long as it was a
big pack of cars trading positions.
But guys just seem to get impatient at Talladega. And one wrong move, or one
too many blocks of the guys behind them, can cause problems. That's when the
trouble starts.
Drivers know they can't lift off that throttle. If they do, they'll lose so
much momentum that it takes at least a couple laps around the 2.66-mile
track to get it built back up. By then, they've lost the draft. And when
they lose the draft, they lose laps very quickly. And once you get down a
lap at Talladega, it's very tough to get it back. Even to get out in front
of the lead pack and wait for a caution is tough to do.
Now, after saying all that, all indications point to another "Dale & Dale Show" on Sunday.
Dale Earnhardt won both races at Talladega last year and Dale Jarrett won
the Daytona 500 this season, not to mention the Winston 500 in the fall of
1998. Both have questions, however, coming into the ninth race of the 2000
season.
Jarrett will be driving a different car than the one he won with at Daytona. That one is in Daytona USA for the rest of the year. He'll use the car that won the Bud Shootout instead. A car he admits was always just a little slower in testing than the one that won the Daytona 500.
But the rule changes to the restrictor plates and shocks were put in place partly
because of just how dominant his winning ride and the other Fords were at Daytona. But while every team says it'll lose about 20 horsepower with the new plates, I wouldn't be surprised if that meant only about 10 horsepower when you're
talking about Robert Yates engines.
As for Earnhardt, sure he finished 21st at Daytona and wasn't a factor for the
first time in two decades. But I think you can put Earnhardt in a shoebox
with wheels at Talladega and he'll find some way to work his way to the
front. He just understands the aerodynamics and what the air does around
these cars during the race. He uses that to his advantage better than anyone
else today, and maybe as well as anyone since Buddy Baker.
With handling less of a key to winning at Talladega and the rule changes
since Daytona, Earnhardt will certainly be more of a factor at this
restrictor-plate race. At Daytona, the 2000 Monte Carlo was buried by the
Ford Taurus all week. Since then, the Monte Carlos have also been given two
more inches of front air dam to help with aerodynamics, the front springs
will be different, and Talladega is a track that doesn't require a perfect
set-up to reach Victory Lane.
As for points leader Bobby Labonte, he was the first Pontiac at Daytona, finishing sixth behind a top-five of Fords. But the Pontiac camp has been saying that the Grand Prix has been at an aerodynamic disadvantage now for over a month. It'll be
interesting to see if the Pontiac's superspeedway package is behind the curve Sunday.
Touchstone Energy 300
After last weekend in Nashville, Randy LaJoie is now the answer to a trivia question. He's the first Busch Series regular to win a race. And while some Winston Cup drivers will be in the race Saturday, Mark Martin isn't one of
them. That leaves the possibility open for a second straight Busch driver to
reach Victory Lane.
LaJoie is second in points and his team always runs well at the restrictor-plate tracks. In fact, a year ago he led every bit of this race
before running into another car that was headed to the garage leaving the pits. LaJoie also ran well at Daytona this year and with a couple of laps to go he went for the lead but got shuffled back to seventh. He will be strong
Saturday.
While Martin won't be around, Joe Nemechek and Terry Labonte could pick up where they left off last year in this race when they finished less than a tenth-of-a-second apart at the finish line. Labonte got the win.
Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach
|
WHERE: |
Long Beach Street Circuit |
|
WHEN: |
Sunday, 4 p.m. (ESPN) |
|
DEFENDING CHAMPION: |
Juan Montoya |
While the snow kept the cars off Nazareth's oval last weekend, they'll race
on the streets of Long Beach rain or shine.
I'm interested in seeing how the Toyota engine handles its first real test
in reliability for Chip Ganassi. It was 1-for-2 in Homestead and Juan
Montoya won the pole for last week's postponed race in Nazareth on a
mile-oval. But this is the first street race for the engine and it will be
required to handle a range of rpms during the race.
These cars will turn as much as 16,000 rpms on the long straightaway, but as
few as 4,500 in the hairpins. So far we've seen the Toyotas do well on the
ovals, but that's at a constant rpm. This race will test that engine up and
down the power band and it'll be interesting to see how it holds up.
If the Toyota holds up, I'd expect Juan Montoya to win his first race of
2000 and second straight in Long Beach.
| |
ALSO SEE
Weber: Yates makes Jarrett, Rudd tough at Talladega
Smaller plates mean bigger challenges for teams at Talladega
Furr: Talladega is no Martinsville
Diehard 500 Breakdown
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