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Tuesday, February 27
Tough week, tough weekend
By Royce McGee
Special to ESPN.com
One of the longest weeks in the history of NASCAR is finally behind us.
I think a lot of people in the garage area at Rockingham handled the weekend better than I had expected. I'd thought there would be a more somber mood but that just goes to show how professional we are. Although we will always miss Dale, life goes on. Our life is racing, so we'll go into work everyday and try to make the best we can out of it.
|  | | Mike Skinner's No. 31 and Dale Earnhardt's No. 3 were both owned by Richard Childress Racing. |
Dale and I had gotten to where we could relate pretty well the past couple of years. He was pretty outgoing once you got to know him and he would really joke around with you.
He made a huge impression on the Lowe's team after we won the Gatorade Twin 125 race at Daytona. He came up to us in the garage the next morning and told us what a good job he thought we had done in the race. A lot of the guys that work behind the scenes at the No.31 shop weren't there, but the seven guys at the track that day really appreciated Dale's comments. Hearing him say that you did a good job meant a lot because he knew how hard it was to win at these places.
Rockingham is one of those places that it's really hard to win at. The Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse Racing team had a pretty rough weekend there. We made some pretty big mistakes Monday -- you can call them learning curves or mistakes, but it's still the same.
It all started Saturday morning. Our car was a little tight all day and we were trying to get ready to qualify. We probably weren't going to sit on the pole so we decided to take a little gamble and hopefully get in the top 10. We loosened up the car with air pressure adjustments and changed the track bar -- some things Mike and I had agreed might help.
Lo and behold, when we went out to qualify an hour-and-a-half later, the temperature was a little warmer and the car got really loose and Mike just about lost the race car to the wall. Luckily, he was able to get it back under control but we had to take a provisional. That's not very good because when the green flag waves at The Rock, the farther back in the field you start, the faster the leader catches you and laps you.
We struggled a bit in Happy Hour and ended up using our teammate, the No. 29 car driven by Kevin Harvick, as a guide. We put their setup in the Lowe's Chevy and felt a lot better about it when we left Saturday night.
It rained most of the day Sunday and we had to race Monday, so conditions were not the same. The car was a little looser Monday than we had anticipated and it took us pretty much all day to get it tighter. I think a lot of drivers fought that scenario throughout the race -- the track was a lot looser Monday than it had been during Happy Hour. That's part of racing over a two-day period.
On Sunday, the weather was cold, misty and rainy and the track temperature was really cold. Then it rained all night and washed away the rubber on the track. But the sun came out Monday and the track temperature was 30 degrees warmer, so the shocks and springs didn't match up like they did Saturday and Sunday morning. Needless to say, we weren't happy with ourselves when we left Monday.
We're headed for Las Vegas this weekend, which is something the Lowe's team always looks forward to. We have a little more to look forward to this time because Mike is eligible for the No Bull 5, although I wish it was under different circumstances. But we were good enough at Talladega, having finished sixth, to be the next eligible team.
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Although we will always miss Dale, life goes on. Our life is racing, so we'll go into work everyday and try to make the best we can out of it. ” |
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— Royce McGee |
I don't really think there's more pressure associated with the million-dollar prize -- we put enough pressure on ourselves to begin with. We'll go in and approach Las Vegas like any other race -- it pays 175 points, not $1 million. That's the important thing here. Yeah, we can win $1 million Sunday. That's a big thing dollar-wise, but if you look at the whole year overall, each race pays 175 points and we've got to maximize our points each week. If we can't win the race, we need to get all the points we can. I look at how many points we earn. Did we lead a lap and get five additional points?
I feel like we've got a bit of a head start on Las Vegas. We tested out there for two days in January. We tried a couple of new things for our race setup that we haven't in the past and we were really happy with the things we did.
Mike was pretty pleased with both cars we tested, so it was a tossup as to which car to race this weekend. We made long runs with both cars and decided on a car that we ran last year at Vegas and Phoenix. We just put some new body pieces on it and changed it aerodynamically. We were only a tenth of a second off of the No. 24 and No. 25, which seemed to be the superior cars there. So, we've been working hard at what we need to be even better than we were. We left the test ready to put the whole package together and be a contender when we return.
Las Vegas is a "Mike Skinner-type track." It's a mile-and-a-half track, like Fontana, and a little bit like Lowe's Motor Speedway. Las Vegas just suits Mike's driving style.
If we get the car running pretty well and it's not pushing or too loose, Mike can adjust his driving style and compensate for it. His talent will show through in that situation. Mike is a pretty aggressive, flat-out driver who hates when his race car is tight. If we can free it up for him, he seems to run faster. We're hoping that's the case Sunday and the Lowe's Chevrolet is the fastest car on the track --especially on the final lap.
Royce McGee is the crew chief for Mike Skinner and the No. 31 Lowe's Chevrolet on the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. He will be providing a weekly diary to ESPN.com throughout the season. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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