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Tuesday, August 28
Bad luck plagues Skinner again
By Royce McGee
Special to ESPN.com
| |  | | | Skinner |
Last Saturday night's race at Bristol Motor Speedway didn't turn out much differently for the No. 31 Lowe's Chevrolet team than many races have this season. Mike Skinner and Lowe's Racing were competitive all weekend and qualified up front only to have really bad luck rear its ugly head once the race started.
The Lowe's Chevrolet was pretty stout in Friday morning's practice. Our first run wasn't the best, but Gil Martin (Skinner's Busch Series crew chief) came over and helped us after Mike's Busch practice was complete. Gil and Mike had already been practicing and working on the set-up in the No. 21 Rockwell Automation/Brant Motorsports Chevy long before the Winston Cup practice started. We made one run and the Lowe's Chevy reacted the same way the Busch car had. We jacked it up and changed three springs, the truck arms and the nose weight. Those chassis adjustments were great and the Lowe's machine was a lot better on the next run. We kept playing with the shocks and track bar a bit and kept getting it better.
Mike went out for his qualifying lap and came over the radio and disappointingly said he didn't think it was good enough for a top-20 starting position. Man, was he wrong. We figured we'd be lucky to barely get a frontstretch pit stop because a bunch of cars had run much faster in practice than we did in qualifying. But when your team goes out to qualify early, guys watch your lap and try to post a better lap than you did. Bristol is one of those tracks that if you drive it a little too hard, the track will bite you. Or if you don't drive it hard enough, you'll be too slow. For qualifying at Bristol, you've got to hit your marks and do what you did in practice. Hopefully, the car will stick to the track and you'll sit on the pole. That's what our teammate Jeff Green did. He slowed down a bit but he said he just drove the car like he did in practice and didn't try anything fancy -- that's all he could do. Well, it was good enough for the pole position for the America Online Chevrolet and the Lowe's team was on the outside pole. Needless to say, we were pretty happy with the second-starting position for one of the most exciting races of the year.
We were pretty good in Happy Hour on Friday evening because to run 25 laps in a row at Bristol. Mike made that long run and came into the pits and said the handling on the Lowe's Chevy was tight in the center of the corner and that it needed a little more grip. So, we started throwing things at the car to make it better. Then he'd go run five laps but said those changes took the car too far to the opposite side. But we could never completely get rid of the problem we were fighting -- we could only move the tightness around in the car. We could make too much grip or get rid of the grip entirely -- but we couldn't find a happy medium. We tried different things during that practice we might do during the race just to see how the car would react. For example, we opened a shock up, we added and removed a spring rubber and other things that can be done during a pit stop to adjust the Lowe's Chevrolet. There were a lot of green-flag runs Saturday night, and if you made a change, you were stuck with it for a long time because you'd lose laps by pitting under green to correct it. We tried to build a data bank during Happy Hour so we wouldn't be stuck with a chassis adjustment for 120 or so green-flag laps that we couldn't do anything about. We knew what helped and what hurt the Lowe's Chevy by the time Happy Hour was complete.
Mike remained in the second position for the first part of the race until the first wave of bad luck rolled in. A lapped car hit the Lowe's Chevy in the left rear, spun it out and tore the left-rear quarter panel. We pitted twice under caution to cut off the left-rear sheet metal. We didn't lose a lap but we were jammed up behind the lapped cars on the restart and lost a lot of track position. Just like anywhere we've been this year, track position is very important -- especially at Bristol and Martinsville. We got that fixed and got Mike back on the track.
Soon after, another lapped car hit us and spun us out. He spun us down on the inside of the back straightaway and the Lowe's Chevrolet hit the retaining wall. That hit bent the rear clip and smashed the whole front end. When we took the car behind the wall, we cut the whole front end of the car off, changed the radiator and cut all the sheet metal off. In the meantime, we noticed that the rear clip had been pushed down and had bent the truck arms. The truck arms hold the rear-end housing in place -- they actually connect the rear end to the car. So, they're crucial to the race car. We had extensive work to do on the Lowe's Chevy. We were forced to bring the frame machine out and pull the rear clip back up and get the rear end back in place.
When we were ready to go racing again, we put Green in the Lowe's Chevy because Mike took a pretty good hit and was still recovering from his ankle surgery. Because Mike started the race, he would be credited with the driver points and the start, and there was no sense in risking a further injury to him by finishing the race at the rough-and-tough Bristol. Jeff ran some good times, even though we were many laps down to the leader. We couldn't really race anyone because we were on our own lap, but we were able to pick up about six or seven positions by the time the night was over. It's not any fun for the driver or the team to have to just "ride around" and make laps, but it earns you vital points when you do. We could have just loaded the car onto the truck and quit for the evening, but we wouldn't have earned as many points. Plus, it gives the team a good refresher course on how to fix a crashed race car.
We're trying to close the book on Bristol and look at Darlington as our next opportunity to overcome this slump we're in and bring home a strong finish. The March race at Darlington was going to be the best finish ever for the Lowe's team at Darlington. We'd had a good car all day and were running in the sixth position before the final caution flag came out. Our car was really good on long runs and we had some good track position. We were running in the top 10 when we got wrecked with 12 laps remaining. We needed a good finish at Darlington -- we'd just had a good finish at Atlanta and had a decent position in the points. If we'd finished the Darlington race where we'd been racing, we would have left Darlington in approximately the 12th position in owner points. Instead, we left in the 24th place and have had trouble climbing back ever since. So, I guess you could say Darlington was a turning point in our season. Not exactly a good turning point.
These new Goodyear tires held up pretty well at Darlington in the March race. Of course, each time the caution comes out, teams pit for tires but that's not as critical as it used to be. Drivers used to run 10 laps at Darlington and want new tires. Now, we can go about 25 laps or so before the drivers start complaining. Darlington is just a very abrasive track and has been for years. They paved it about four years ago and it was pretty good for about two years and it had plenty of grip in it. Now, we've got to refer to older set-ups and look at the shocks we ran then. We'll put our heads together and take this Lowe's team to Darlington this weekend and try again to have our best run there.
Royce McGee is the crew chief for the No. 31 Lowe's Chevrolet on the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. He is providing a weekly diary to ESPN.com throughout the season. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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