| | 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.
If I had to grade the first quarter of the 2000 season, I'd have to give the Lowe's team a "B" or "B-" -- but definitely somewhere in the "B" family.
We could be sitting here with three wins right now. I know a lot of teams could say the same thing, but Atlanta was the one that definitely got away; Martinsville certainly could have been win No. 2; and, of course, we all know the Talladega deal. But I'm proud of the runs we've had because those three races are on a superspeedway (Talladega), a short track (Martinsville) and an intermediate (Atlanta).
The race that was probably the biggest disappointment was Las Vegas because
we ran so well there last year. And even though Darlington was far from a
"good" run, based on this team's experience there, it was actually a really
good finish (14th).
While the team gets a "B", the pit crew has to get an A+. They are on the mark right now. It's nothing to see several stops during the day that are in the 15-second range. So I'm really proud of them.
The thing I like best, and I knock on wood when I say it, is that other than
knocking the side off, or the normal beating and banging at Martinsville that
you get, we haven't torn anything up. And again, I have to knock on wood
hard when I say that because we can go three or four races in a row and tear
everything we got up. But what that does to a race team is it keeps them from being behind all the time, just barely getting the car shoved into the truck for the next race.
Staying out of trouble gives us a chance to come and critique what we've got, fine-tune on it, and make it a little better. The example I'm going to use, unfortunately, is the No. 21 RCR Busch team. They have gone through a ton of
bad luck over the past four or five races and now they're just seeing what
cars they have left to try to get into the truck to go race. And that's
something this team went through, especially in the first couple of years.
Not having to repair cars keeps our people fresh and that's so
important with the schedule that we've got. I'm really tickled to death that
we not only took a long weekend, but actually a three-and-a-half day weekend.
We reached a point on Thursday at lunch when me, Jon Liebensperger (shop
foreman), David Smith (team manager) and Royce McGee (car chief) looked at
where we were for California. We felt that at about 11:40 a.m. that we
were going to do a good 20-minute cleaning up period and let the guys out of
here on Thursday. We had a few guys that were going to travel away for
Easter, so that gave them a half-day jump on the travel.
Richard Childress is a big supporter of that. One of the signs on our
bulletin boards says, "It's quality, not quantity." It's not how many hours
you can get in here and log. It's about working smarter, not necessarily
harder. It makes a difference in your people. It makes them feel like they're a little bit refreshed. I've gone to the fifth race of the season and felt like I was so burned out that I should have been at race 35. I saw a refreshed look on our guys when they walked back into the shop Monday morning.
The only time I hate to see things slow down is at the end of the season. In
1998, our program was so strong at the end, you get fearful of losing that
momentum over the course of the winter. But as far as one off weekend
breaking the momentum of a race team ... boy, if that's all it takes you're in
trouble anyhow.
We've got a weird schedule coming up. We just came off nine in a row,
actually 10 in a row when you figure the extra week at Daytona, but we now run
two races and catch another off week. And then we start one of the toughest
stretches of the year.
We have two tough stretches. The one we just came off was tough, but one thing that makes it a little better is that most of the races are close to home. The stretch that starts at Lowe's Motor Speedway with The Winston and carries from there all the way through Loudon (July 9).
Then July's goofy. We run Loudon and then we're off. Then we run Pocono and
we're off again. But then starts a tough 12- or 13-race stretch that
runs at the Brickyard (Aug. 5) and goes all the way through Rockingham (Oct.
22). After July, we have one off weekend until the last race in Atlanta
(Nov. 19).
But that's when the strong race teams are separated from the weaker race
teams. When we go to the Brickyard, we'll have a pretty good feel for who's
who -- who is probably in contention for the championship and the top 10. When
you get done with that 12- or 13-race stretch, you know more or likely who
your champion is going to be and who the top 10 on the stage is.
I didn't stay completely away from racing this past weekend. My son Brandon
ran in the Bandalero races that we're getting ready for at Lowe's Motor
Speedway. We went out to Concord Motorsports Park and had as much fun
Friday doing that I guess because I worked a lot of hours Friday getting it
ready to go and he finished second in his heat race and fifth in his
feature.
Like I told Brandon after the race, and it's no different than working on the cars
here in the shop, my motto is that I don't mind working 120 hours in a week
as long as we can reap some reward at the race track. I don't mean a
paycheck every other week. Competitive. Good finishes. Top fives. Wins.
Poles. It's hard working 120 hours and go run 30th, or qualifying with a
provisional.
It makes it hard to swallow and hard to sell to your people. You can sit up and give them the "Win One for the Gipper" speech every week.
But they're going to look at you and say, whoa, it sounds good but what
about where we qualified and finished. But like I told him, "Brandon, to see
how you ran tonight and how much you were on the wheel and how determined
you were, it makes Daddy feel good working on that thing."
Coming home and working on it at night instead of sitting in the easy chair watching nighttime TV or fishing or whatever. I don't mind doing it. He's been doing it almost a year and I still have to remember he's 8 years old.
Sometimes I lose that concept still. Sometimes I get him and Mike mixed up.
But it's as much on the wheel as I've seen him since we've been doing it and
it was a pure pleasure and delight to see that. It was neat spending Friday
night racing with Brandon.
Linda and I and the three kids spent the rest of the weekend together. We didn't really go visit friends. We did a lot of things, but we did it the five of us together and it was really neat and a lot of fun. It's moments that you cherish and that your certainly realize how much you miss because of the demands of our schedule.
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