| | 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 were happy and disappointed -- again -- as we left Fort Worth, Texas.
We were happy from the standpoint that, for the first time in four years at Texas Motor Speedway, the No. 31 car did not have an altercation. It was also the first time since the inaugural race in 1997 that Mike Skinner didn't have to get hauled to the medical center or a hospital and that we could roll the car into the truck. From that standpoint, we are very, very happy.
We also finished on the lead lap; led a lap, which is worth five points, and that is what we try to accomplish somehow every week. So, there were a lot of positives about the weekend.
The negatives are no different that what Mike and I talked about (Monday), and that is we're missing something and we can't put our finger on it. And I wish I knew where to go. I wish I even knew what the area was. I'm not saying if we knew what area it was that it would be easy to fix, but at least we would know what to focus on. But we fight the same thing every single week. It's getting frustrating for me, for Mike and these guys that work these 80-hour weeks to go thinking that we've dotted every "i" and crossed every "t".
It's no different than last Saturday night when we left the garage area. NASCAR had left the garage open for most of the rain-delayed Busch race after it restarted. I looked up at six o'clock and there were two cars in the garage being worked on -- and one of them was the 31. But it's that way every week, and it's not because we want to go through the motions and say we worked until they closed the garage and everybody else was gone. We're just trying to make sure that we don't overlook anything. We're trying to give it every ounce of energy that we can give. But we're not capitalizing on it, for whatever reason.
I don't want sound negative, or in a giving-up type mode, because I'm not. But like I told Mike, we need to change something major. Either the way we're doing things, or something else, because we just keep going back and encountering the same problem. Even in Atlanta, as dominant as we was, the hint of the problem we fight every week was still there -- and that's making the car turn through the middle of the corner and off.
I'm not sure where to go for this help. I'm not too proud to take help. A person might ask, "Is the 3 car any better?" Well, to some degree, "Yes."
Was it any better in Texas? No, not really.
They finished seventh and we finished 12th. I think they got a little better as the race went on and we got a little worse. I go back to Rockingham -- they were awfully good in Saturday's practice and quit early. We were in trouble. We mirrored their setup, spring for spring, shock for shock, and swaybar for swaybar. They ran second and we struggled to a 21st-place finish. So that doesn't appear to necessarily be the answer.
We're 16th in points, 80-something out of 10th and less than 200 out of fifth, so we're not at the bottom of the barrel going deeper. But this race team is so much better than an average 13th-place finish in the last three races. Yeah, Mike just had his best finish ever at Texas, and two weeks ago he had his best finish ever at Darlington. Again, there's positives that keep popping up, but the negative is that I know we are so much stronger than this.
What will get us out of this hole is to keep working. But my concern is that hard work, being the last ones to leave the garage area and the first ones in, working until 10 o'clock at night like we did Monday is not the complete answer. We've got to make sure we're working on the right things. Something's missing there and I'm not sure what it is.
We're going to Martinsville and we were very dominant there last October. Right now we're like the baseball team that has a really good group of starting pitchers ? but we don't have a closer. That's something, if we're going to win races, we've got to fix.
We can't lead 191 laps at Atlanta and, with 20 laps to go, have an engine failure. It's nobody's fault but we've gotta get rid of that.
We can't go to Martinsville and lead over 100 laps in the final half of the race and finish seventh or eighth. We just aren't getting to that final lap in the position we need to be in -- and that's something we have to fix as well.
But the first thing is to fix these handling problems and then we can worry about the other. I think the 2000 Monte Carlo issue is a gone issue for right now. The first few races it was obviously a big point. I think Dale Earnhardt Jr., put that issue out of sight and out of mind last weekend. The Kid, in his 12th race, won the race. And won the race in dominating fashion.
The promising thing about that is that two or three years ago, when we the 3 and 31 and all the Chevrolet teams with the exception of Gordon were struggling, you could say they had the same pieces to work with as we did so we can't complain about the Monte Carlo. Dale Jr. doing what he did Sunday covers two areas: He's got a Chevrolet Monte Carlo like we do and he's part of our aerodynamic alliance. So we're sending a guy to DEI Friday to measure that race car, from bumper to bumper, and roof to floor pan. So from the aero standpoint, we should be able to mirror that race car that he won with. And that's our plan looking toward Fontana.
If we can ever get our first top-five finish of 2000, and right now our first top-10 finish, I feel like it will build us some momentum. The promising thing is that we have two promising race tracks coming our way -- Martinsville and Talladega.
Talladega is like we're spinning a roulette wheel. We're heading there to test for two days this week (Wednesday and Thursday), hoping to learn about the new downsized restrictor plate, plus the chassis changes NASCAR has made in the front of the car. But, as you know, you can be dominant at Talladega and make the wrong move with two to go, or one to go, or half a lap to go.
We need to get our closer in the bullpen up to speed.
| |
ALSO SEE
McReynolds: It's my call
McReynolds: Darn that Darlington
|
