| | 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.
The car we're running at Pocono this week is car No. 62, the same car we ran in the Pocono 500 last month. Sure, we'll use a little different configuration from those races we ran No. 62 in over the first part of the season. But we're sticking with No. 62 come Sunday.
What happens, however, and we're all guilty of it in this sport, is we get a car that becomes our favorite car and we run it and we run it and we run it. And what happens is the car doesn't perform as well as maybe it did when you first started running it. But the reason this happens is not because you're running any worse. It's because of the competition.
The competition in this sport doesn't ever quit. Other people get better with their stuff and you kinda sit still with your car because you just about won Atlanta; you sat on the pole at Fontana, and you ran really good at Lowe's Motor Speedway. You get hesitant to change anything about it so you lose ground and other people go around you.
I think we maybe got guilty of a little bit of that with car No. 62.
The No. 62 car was very much in need of some bodywork just because of fatigue. So, since we last ran it, which would have been the first Pocono race, it's had a complete round of sheet metal put on -- everything but the greenhouse and the deck lid area.
We also learned some stuff at the Indy test last week that we know we can apply to Pocono. Indy's not Pocono, but there are a lot of similarities. You've got the long straightaways where you need low drag and you've got some pretty critical corners to get through. Goodyear will also run the exact same tire at Pocono that they do at Indy.
The differences between the race tracks is that we shift gears at Pocono because of the difference in length of the straightaways. Pocono is a lot rougher than Indy, so shocks play a bigger role. But we definitely feel like we learned a few things last week at the Indy test that we can apply there in a couple of weeks, but can also apply that information when we go to
Pocono for the second time.
In reality, even though we've already officially crossed the halfway point
of the season, to me this is really the start of the second half of the
season. Other than Daytona, we're going back to a race track for the
second time.
This is when we start doing some self-evaluations. We do evaluations on ourselves, we do evaluations on each other, and we do evaluations on our team as a whole. It's almost like mid-terms. You need to give yourself a grade, to figure out where you're at and what you need to improve on and do differently.
The good part about it, and it's a plus for every Chevrolet team, is that we have a half season under our belt with the 2000 Monte Carlo. And other than Watkins Glen, Phoenix and Homestead, we'll be going back to the race tracks for a second time. We'll have current notes to
reflect on and look at, to see the "do's" and "don'ts," and what the results were.
Everybody has that advantage, so it's not an advantage to ourselves and
ourselves alone.
Richard Childress, Mike Skinner, myself and David Smith -- four key players in this program -- sat down last week and we candidly talked about some things. Where we are weak; where we need to improve; what we need to do different; how we need to approach things differently. It was a good meeting and I think a lot came out of it.
I'm the biggest believer in the world in communication and talking about things. The people that don't talk about things and hold things inside will never fix the problems and will continue to have them.
It's no different than in a marriage. My wife gets on me about comparing the race team to our marriage, but it's a very similar deal. It's a relationship, one that you spend a ton of time together. It's not just a job. If you don't communicate you feelings and accept constructive
criticism, you'll never get any better at it. You'll just continue to go
back each week and fight the same problems.
And that's what was good last week. The four of us sat down and talked about what we felt our weaknesses were and what we needed to different and improve on. Obviously, the results from Pocono and the upcoming races will dictate whether it was a really good meeting or not. But we felt good when we left the office. It's all about communication. You have to do it.
We're trying to have our guys fresh, not just for Pocono because we do draw another off weekend after it. But we go into the longest stretch of the 2000 season starting at The Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis, which goes all the way through Rockingham toward the latter part of October before another off weekend.
We certainly are treasuring these off weekends because we know there were five this year and will probably be only three next year. They're precious now but they're going to be very precious next year.
The guys got a little time off. We're starting to let some of our guys, over these off-week periods, take a little vacation time so you kinda see everybody breathing a little easier, a little more refreshed.
I know I took a three-day weekend and I know I came here in a little better frame of mind Monday morning. I got a lot of things done. I relaxed and really enjoyed my family over the three days. Linda and I had some time together and did some things with the kids.
I know I touch on the Bandalero a lot but the Bandalero with Brandon is a special little deal. As I've stated before, he's 9 years old and growing up in a hurry, faster than I can almost keep up with, and this has created a little bit of a stronger bond between him and I. I've done a lot better job this year at being Dad on this Bandalero, instead of trying to be Larry
McReynolds the crew chief.
He and I went out to the garage Sunday for four or five hours, even though it was about 1,000 degrees out there, and worked. I'm trying to teach him why we're doing this, and this is why we should do this. I'm trying to teach him as well as getting things done on it.
The off-weekend that I just experienced, doing the things I did, was the first one since 1997 that I physically stayed home and didn't go off and do a truck race or a Busch race. I'm not complaining because it has been 100-percent self-inflicted and I've enjoyed the TV work and regret that it's probably going to come to an end at the end of this season. I feel fortunate that I had the opportunity to do it for six years and have enjoyed and learned a
lot from doing it. And the network and fan feedback has been good and
rewarding.
It's not about money or getting your face on TV and getting home and watching yourself. It's just a different experience, looking at our sport through a different pair of eyes and experiencing something that not a lot of people have got to do. It's been a very rewarding time and I'm indebted to the people at World Sports (TNN and TBS) and CBS over the past six years
who have given me the opportunity to do these things.
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