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Tuesday, July 31
Blaney showed progress at Pocono
By Dave Blaney
Special to ESPN.com
| |  | | | Blaney |
For almost everyone involved in racing, the chance to compete at Indianapolis Motor Speedway takes on added importance whenever the date comes up on the schedule.
For our No. 93 Amoco/Siemens Dodge team and the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, our seventh trip to the Brickyard is this weekend, and it couldn't come at a more important time for our young team.
We're just beginning to shows signs as a team that we can run up front every week with the new Dodge Intrepid. After starting late in NASCAR after 15 years in sprint-cars, I'm finally getting comfortable in knowing what stock cars need to go faster every week. And we're in the market for a primary sponsor, now that Amoco has announced it will leave the sport after over a decade as a sponsor.
With the obvious history Indy holds for any American motorsports fan, our being able to bring the stock cars to one of the most famous venues in the world makes the Brickyard 400 immediately one of the two or three most significant dates on the schedule. For me -- having grown up in open-wheel country in Ohio -- the possibility always seemed more likely that, as I had more success in the USAC and World of Outlaws sprint car ranks, racing in the Indianapolis 500 would be a more likely career destination than ending up where I am -- racing at Daytona, Charlotte, Talladega and Indianapolis in stock cars.
|  | | Blaney is currently 26th in the Winston Cup points standings. |
Before Bill Davis gave me the chance to make the move to NASCAR in 1998, most of the racing I had done was on dirt, although I had driven a half-dozen ARCA races and some USAC Silver Crown Series events throughout the 1980s. I did get a chance to test some Indy cars for several owners, but it was clear as time passed that NASCAR was the place to be, even though no one I had raced with in the Outlaws was ever able to make the transition to NASCAR work.
Because the time I've spent in NASCAR has been relatively short compared to a lot of the guys we race every week, I seem to still be learning about these cars at a pretty consistent pace. The transition this year at Bill Davis Racing from Pontiacs to the Dodge Intrepid will be a huge benefit in the long-term, but we've been inconsistent as a group so far in 2001.
The switch may have affected me more because I was just getting used to what to expect from the one brand before switching to a new car everybody -- including our BDR crew chiefs, Doug Randolph (No. 93) and Tommy Baldwin Jr. (No. 22) -- needed to learn about all over again.
I've believed from the start of this year we would probably not see a big jump in performance from the Dodges as a group until we started going back to tracks for the second time in 2001. Daytona over the July 4 weekend was the first track we returned to and we were second with 15 miles to go before getting bounced around and out of the lead draft at the end. Still, we saw some progress with all 10 Dodge teams.
Last week's race at Pocono, Pa., was the first time we've gone back to a track where the superspeedway rules limit, to a certain extent, what the cars can show. Where the performances in last weekend's race come into play for the Brickyard 400 is that the demands are so similar in what the cars need -- big power, ability to turn in the
long, flat corners and a fair amount of aerodynamics for the long straights. So the guys that ran well last week -- Jeff Gordon, pole-sitter Ricky Rudd, Dale Earnhardt Jr., race winner Bobby Labonte and Bill Elliott -- are obvious choices to run well at Indy.
"But despite our overall finishes (22nd for me, 38th for Ward Burton), our BDR teams ran well at Pocono and also tested well over the past two weeks in separate sessions at the Brickyard. Ward ran right to the front after qualifying in the back (34th) and was a threat to win until his brother, Jeff Burton, clipped him from behind with 50 laps to go.
The emotions of our Amoco team could not have been more tested than they were Sunday. We've had several races this year where we've been in position to win. We led 70 laps at Atlanta in March and looked like we had the car to beat but had a tire problem after a pit-stop and didn't close the deal. We were in the top-three inside the final 15 miles at both Texas and Michigan, too, so we've shown the kind of speed it takes to win at this level, even with a young team.
At Pocono, we were probably right there with the No. 24 (Gordon) and the No. 28 (Rudd) in the final practice, so we knew we had a chance to have a great day Sunday. We went straight to the top-five (from 15th-place starting position), but then I felt the power sag on Lap 20. All my pressures on the dash stayed up but we just lost horsepower. We limped around at the back of the lead lap as car after car passed me. It looked a like an opportunity for a good finish had gone away early.
As it turned out, we got a chance to pit around lap 50, found a spark-plug wire had vibrated loose and got it reconnected. My times picked back up to where the leaders were, but the long stop put us a lap down. We stayed there for almost 100 laps, hoping for a caution to give us a chance to get back on the lead lap. Unfortunately, we got the chance at Ward's expense. His wreck back in the pack gave us a chance to race again.
When we pitted, we knew we would be close on gas mileage to the finish, but we hoped a combination of things -- caution laps (at reduced speed) and divine intervention -- might give us the extra lap we needed to make it to the finish. After racing back into the top-10 (eighth-place) from where we'd dropped into the field early in the race (42nd), it looked like we were going to salvage the kind of finish our car should have gotten all along.
But ... the race ran green for all but three of the remaining laps and -- as my car went into the tunnel-turn (Turn 2) coming to the white flag, the engine sputtered. The trip down pit road to complete the final 2½-miles cost us 14 positions as well as four spots in the standings coming into Indy.
Nevertheless, we learned a great deal about what the car wants and -- again -- it was the first time we'd really taken the Dodge back to a track where we'd already raced this season and I think that showed with all the Dodges.
Check back later this week for Part II of Dave Blaney's diary, in which he talks more about the Dodge program, his own racing history and the upcoming Brickyard 400
Drivers, crew chiefs and car owners involved in Dodge's return to the NASCAR Winston Cup Series in 2001 will provide periodic features to ESPN.com throughout the season. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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