| | By Larry McReynolds
Special to ESPN.com
Editor's note: Veteran crew chief Larry McReynolds will provide a weekly column on ESPN.com, taking you inside the garage for Mike Skinner and the Lowe's No. 31 Chevrolet team.
We would have loved to have won at Talladega for a list of reasons a mile long.
It would have been Mike's first win; Team Lowe's 31 first win; this team as a unit's first win; and there's something special about me winning Talladega because it is my stomping grounds. I remember how special winning there in 1992 with Davey Allison was. There's just something special, being from Birmingham, about winning at what you would call your home track.
But again, I'm awfully proud of everything that went on down there -- from testing a week and a half ago, to taking a chance by cutting another speedway body off and starting over. Jack Lewis and the guys in our in-house fab shop here at the 31 shop dug in there and put a great body on. You can definitely say it was a joint effort.
I looked back there at the shop one night and Jack had Bill O'Dea, who takes care of our suspension, helping hang the roof. I look back there a bit later and Stevie Waldrop, who takes care of our pit stop car, was helping hang the quarter panels and deck lid. Jack just used people whenever they were free to help do the body on that car. It was the only way we could get it done and make it to the wind tunnel and the test.
I knew the first time we took that car to the wind tunnel, about two weeks before the race, that what we saw there was we had made some big gains on our speedway effort. The test that we did the week before going to Talladega backed that up.
I was really proud of Mike on Sunday. He may agree or disagree with me, but I kinda saw a different Mike Skinner kick in the last 30 or 35 laps. He got kicked out of line and shuffled out of line trying to run the high side. David Smith and I looked at each other with 30 laps to go and we were saying, "How did we screw this one up? We're back here running in fourth, 10 laps ago we're running 15th now, and how are we ever going to get back to the front?"
But Mike knew, by virtue of knowing there were no friends or dancing partners, that he had to get back there on his own. He knew the bottom of the race track was his best friend and he picked and chose when he got by them and how he got by them. The next thing I knew we were running second and third, and I was pretty surprised we had got back there based on what I'd seen most of the day.
What can I say about Jeff Gordon? Other than Dale Earnhardt, he's as good as it gets at Daytona and Talladega. He made some risky moves, but he made moves that got him to the front. Yeah, there was a small part of me that wanted to say, "Mike, how bad do you want this first win? You've got a front bumper and he's got a rear bumper."
I'm not glad the results ended up like they did, which was Gordon winning the race and us running second. But I don't want to see Mike Skinner win his first race, or any race, by wrecking someone. And I don't want to be a part of winning a race like that, especially at a place like Talladega where laying the bumper to somebody can cause some harm. That isn't how we want to win that first race for this organization.
It was Mike's career-best finish. The next mark on the bar is the "daddy rabbit," the one we're trying to get.
I go back to something I heard Mario Andretti say in a TV interview 15 years ago and it's stuck with me. Here's what he was trying to say:
If you've never finished 10th, and the day finally comes that you do, it's the greatest thing in the world. If you've never finished fifth, and the day finally comes that you do, that's the greatest thing in the world. And I guess I'm speaking for myself more than Mike because he hasn't won a Winston Cup points event, but a lot of people in the Team 31 organization haven't won a points event. Obviously, David Smith won plenty of them when he was with the 3 team and I've won my share, but there's not a lot of people in this organization that have. So, if you've never finished second, the day you do is a great feeling, and I'm sure it's the feeling Mike felt. Disappointed, but "Hey, I finished second today."
But once you win a Winston Cup race, second place (and I know it's a cliché) is just the very first loser in a race.
Again, I'm proud of what we did. It was our first top 10 of the year. We got a lot of things accomplished. We didn't make a big jump in the points, but made a lot of ground up on a lot of people. That's important.
You have to step back and say, "Yeah, we only moved up two positions, but now we're only 100 points out of seventh or eighth." So the big picture looks better. I think now that we've got the second level of the top mark, you'll see this team dig in just a little big harder to try to grab that next mark. I'm not saying we haven't grabbed yet but now there's only one more notch on that meter.
BUT, we need to win a race. This diary keeps repeating itself. We really want to try to win one of these next couple of races because that's what sets the field for The Winston coming up at Lowe's Motor Speedway next month. We want to get in it the easy way instead of the hard way. They're both hard ways to get in, but the real hard way is having to get there through the Winston Open. It's almost like being the 16th seed in the NCAA tournament. But if we don't, we'll run the Winston Open and try to win it to get in the hard way.
I'm looking forward to the next two races. We're taking the same car to Fontana that we ran at Atlanta, Darlington and Texas. It seems to be our favorite downforce car. And at Richmond we'll run the same car we ran at Martinsville.
But the greatest thing we have happening in the next few days is finally, finally, finally getting an off weekend. It's been a 10-week stretch when you consider the extra week at Daytona for the Bud Shootout. You can see it on everybody's face -- "I'm tired."
We're going to work hard this week. From the standpoint of getting ready for Fontana, we don't have an off-week because the truck has to leave Monday. But our goal is to be in really good shape Thursday night so we can close the doors and give the guys a long three-day weekend. I know I'm looking forward to it and I think everybody in this shop is.
We had some inspection problems on Friday, like probably 39 or 40 other competitors did. We got asked a lot about that at Talladega. My response is that it's our job to go in there and push the envelope as hard as we can in every area that we can. The biggest area to do that is the deck lid/rear tail area because that's where the rear spoiler is. It's NASCAR's job to make sure we stay in the box that they set forth. It's not that we did wrong, or NASCAR did wrong; we're each trying to do our job. We just have to reach a compromise before they'll put that sticker on the windshield that says the car is approved for practice. It just took a little extra time.
I think the rain may have played a little role in (inspection problems) ... NASCAR had a little extra time to go over the cars with more of a fine-toothed comb. I'm not saying they don't do that every week, but there's no question when you're at Daytona in February with a full day without practice that the cars are inspected tighter than they are at Talladega in May or Daytona in July because of time restraints. It looked like the rain had set in for the day, so they had that extra time to look over it. It wasn't that they singled out any cars. It looked like they were consistent throughout the garage area based on the Bondo dust and grinding you saw going on there most of the day.
I was pretty amazed we got qualifying in on Friday. Those last five or six cars ran in all but the dark. NASCAR and everybody did a good job clinging together to get qualifying in. If felt like on Saturday we were pretty good in race trim. That was the first time we had the car in race trim. All of our wind tunnel time, our track testing, everything we did Friday blocked up and running by ourselves, was in qualifying trim. So we were pretty happy when we left there Saturday with what we saw in the morning practice and Happy Hour.
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