| | 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.
There's no question we missed the setup in Rockingham. But the concern I've got -- and it haunted me all night Sunday and all morning Monday, driving to work, taking a shower, shaving -- is that there are three race tracks in particular that we
have tried a lot of different approaches, and missed each time.
We've tried several different setups and even a lot of different cars. Still, we miss every time we've been to Rockingham, Dover and Darlington.
We had a respectable run at Rockingham at the beginning of last year. We finished sixth, but we weren't very competitive. We caught the cautions right, we
pitted at the right times, and somehow, some way, we ended up sixth. We
really weren't a sixth-place car. Yeah, sixth place is sixth place. It gave
us the points lead a year ago. You take those points whenever, and however, you can get them. But I'm concerned that we cannot put our finger on what we're looking for at those three race tracks.
Do we go test at those race tracks? Absolutely! We're gonna go to
Rockingham, N.C., before we go back there in the fall. But I can't say we've
helped ourselves there any.
I mean, we went to Darlington last year and tested for two days. We burned up 13 or 14 sets of tires. We tested as hard as you can possibly test and went back down there and it was like we hadn't even been there. So we've got to figure that out.
The two high notes from Rockingham was that our teammate, the No. 3 car, had a good run. So that means that RCR's package, our fabrication side of the
bodies and our engines, are capable of a good competitive run there. We've
just got to figure out what Mike Skinner's looking for at that race track to
make long runs.
The other high note, a personal high note, was Dave Marcis
came to my motorhome Saturday night and said, "Larry, I'm in trouble and I really want to run good tomorrow." We sat down for about an hour and I gave him a setup for his race car. He ran a heckuva lot better than we did. So, that's the good news/bad news.
But it was good to see Dave have a good run. Poor ol' Dave Marcis and his bad luck, though. Somebody's power steering pump pulley comes off and goes through his radiator and he spends 30 or 40 laps in the garage area changing the radiator.
I wish I had the answer to why Marcis's car ran good and ours didn't
because, realistically, there's never an absolute, nut-and-bolt the same
car. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's impossible.
Dale Earnhardt, Dave Marcis, and Skinner all had essentially the same setups. But, evidently, it's not what it takes to get Skinner around Rockingham. And
that's the difference.
We had the same power as the 3. The two bodies were built by the same guy, but no two bodies are ever the same. But I think we had a really good body on our car.
We pushed the envelope in every area of the aerodynamics that we could push
with NASCAR and still stay within their templates and their rules. I've seen
the same picture at Dover, Darlington and Rockingham ever since I've been
down here. We go down on Friday and somehow, through Mike's qualifying
ability and fresh tires, taped up, and a really sharply tuned engine, we go
out and get a good qualifying run in.
I keep referencing Darlington. Darlington has been the real disaster for
this race team race after race after race since I've been down here and
before I came down here. But once it gets to the point that you've got to be
out there running on a slick race track with tires that aren't very grippy
and sliding around, that's where this race team has struggled for almost 3½ years. There's no questions the set up is different.
I remember being at Darlington, S.C., for my last race there with the Yates
team for the Southern 500. Dale Jarrett's and Ernie Irvan's setups were 180 degrees from each other and, when Ed Berrier's oil tank plug come out and coated (turns) three and four with oil, it wiped both of our cars out. I think Dale had a six-second lead on third place and we
were one second behind Dale, five seconds ahead of third place walking away.
But the two cars were set up totally different. Dale was looking for "this" in
his car, while Ernie was looking for "this" in his car. The results were both
cars were probably the two best cars there. I think that's more true at a
place where driver finesse is so important -- such as road courses, Darlington,
Rockingham, Dover, Loudon, New Hampshire and Martinsville.
I think when we go to Daytona, Talladega, Michigan and Indianapolis -- places where there's more grip, where the tires don't just wear out and start
sliding -- I think when the two cars run good, more than likely they are set
up very similar. Whether they run bad or good, I think that if you're
working together, your setup is going to be pretty similar to one another.
Somehow, some way, especially if we're going to bid for a championship, we
have got to figure out what Mike Skinner's looking for at those race tracks.
And that's my job to figure out. And I plan on figuring it out.
There's no question we should have come in during the first caution on lap
18. That was a bad call on my part and I'm learning. I'm learning more and
more about Mike. You know, there was I think 18 cars that stayed out and
there was one real loser in that deal. Guess who it was?
Everybody faltered. Dale Earnhardt stayed out and he lost a quarter of a race track. We stayed out and lost a lap and a half, almost two laps doing it. I'm learning that you need to give Mike fresh tires every chance you possibly can put
fresh tires on. I'm learning that. I should've already learned it by now.
We kinda had halfway held our ground there and went by a few
cars and a few had gotten by us. I also know what a snake pit it can be
putting yourself toward the rear of the field (making a pit stop). It's a
Catch-22. There's no question, though, I should have pitted. I should have
took the risk and pitted.
We're pretty excited about the car we're taking to Las Vegas this weekend.
It's the same car that we ran probably 80-90 percent of the end races last
year. It's the car that we ran sixth with at Homestead, third at Charlotte,
strong at Atlanta, sat on the pole with at Pocono. It's been a good chassis
for us.
We put the best 2000 body that we know, to date, and even before we
leave, right before loading it, we're still redoing some things on it
because we're continue to learn every single day about this 2000 body.
That's the commitment we've made; whatever it takes, we're going to push the
best piece out of this shop every single week because that's what most of
our competitors are doing. We're not just going to push something out of
here and load it because it's done. If there's something else on it that we
know we can make better, that's what we gotta do and that's what we're gonna
do.
We've got ourselves in a hole after two races, but we can't look back on
Daytona and Rockingham. We can only work on Daytona and Rockingham because we have to go back to each again this year. I think Daytona is going to be different because, probably by the time we get back there, something in the
rules is going to be different, whether it's body or whether it's on this
spring and shock deal.
My wife asked me Sunday night if I was all bent out of shape about
Rockingham. I said, "Oh, yeah. I'm devastated. We are so much better than a
21st-place race team that it just makes me sick to my stomach to know where
we finished yesterday."
But I can't change it. No matter what, I can't go back and rerun the race. I'll rerun it a hundred times as I've already done, but it is what it is. The results are closed and they're in the file and the drawer is shut. We've got to pick up and hurry up and get to Vegas and go out there on a positive note and try to dig ourselves out of this deficit in the point situation that we've already put ourselves in after two races.
I'm really proud of our pit crew. There's been a lot of argument that this
pit crew is not better than the pit crew we had last year. That's such a
false statement. This pit crew we've got right now is awesome.
We had an unfortunate situation Sunday with a tire rolling away. That cost us 15
seconds under green -- better than half a lap. But, dadgummit, they're trying and when people are trying, what can you say. But this pit crew is on the mark right now.
Last year, we were trying to get our pit crew caught up to the rest of the package. It's such a quest trying to get it all stacked together at one
time. It's like you've got four or five major parts of the puzzle and you
can always get three pieces in place in a hurry. It's like putting the
border of a jigsaw puzzle together. You can get the border together in a
hurry, but then finding the right place for the pieces in the middle is like
trying to find a needle in a haystack.
| |
ALSO SEE
Kernan: Two good bets ... Martin & Roush
Weber: Luck always helps, especially in Vegas
Franchising a bad idea for NASCAR
CarsDirect.com 400 Breakdown
|
