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Tuesday, September 4
Team aiming for top-25
By Royce McGee
Special to ESPN.com
| |  | | | Skinner |
The long, hot weekend at Darlington Raceway is over and the No. 31 Lowe's Chevrolet team is refreshed after having Labor Day off. The team is now ready to tackle Richmond International Raceway.
Darlington wasn't one of the easiest weekends the Lowe's team has had this season. Mike Skinner was running the No. 21 Rockwell Automation Chevrolet in the Busch race, so we were able to use the information from that car and bounce ideas around with his Busch crew chief, Gil Martin. Unfortunately, Darlington presented some challenges for the Busch team, as well, and Mike struggled Friday. Gil walked over a few minutes after Busch practice started and said the No. 21 was "just out to lunch." So, we took what he told us and did some things differently on the Lowe's car, because we try to learn from each Richard Childress Racing team.
Right off the bat in the first Winston Cup practice, Skinner said the Lowe's car had a lot more potential than the Busch car and was more drivable. We made a few changes, gained some speed, then put another set of shocks on, and gained some more. Darlington is notorious for chewing up tires and each lap you make is progressively slower because the tires fall off so much. You're never going to run faster on your second lap. But, if you can stay near your competition or if you can come somewhat close to duplicating your lap time on your second lap, you've made the car better because the tires wear down so quickly. You've got to judge how good your car is based on the lap times.
We kept working at it during Friday morning's practice and thought we had the Lowe's Chevy a lot better, so we put a new set of tires on it with 45 minutes remaining in the practice. We made a qualifying run Mike was really happy with -- we were 10th fastest on the board. Mike said the Lowe's machine was pretty good and we decided to play it conservative and try to get a good starting spot, so we opted to make only a small change. Sometimes you've got to call "uncle" and do that. With the way Mike was struggling in the Busch car and how we've struggled in qualifying recently, that was the thing to do.
Mike's Busch car was really loose on his qualifying lap, which was right before the Winston Cup qualifying session began. After seeing how loose he got, we got some feedback from Gil about their set-up and tried to ensure it didn't happen to the Lowe's Chevrolet. We played with the air pressure a bit but nothing more than that. When Mike made his qualifying run, it wasn't all that hot -- he said that the motor felt a little flat and the Lowe's car wasn't gripping the track as well as it had. We qualified 35th and were quite disappointed, but we decided to try to recover as best as we could Sunday.
In Saturday morning's practice, we weren't very good and had trouble getting the Lowe's Chevrolet to feel the way Mike wanted it to. Forty-five minutes is kind of aggravating because you can only do so much in that amount of time. We did the best we could with 45 minutes, but had plenty of time to change several things during the Busch race to get ready for the 45-minute Happy Hour session that followed the Busch race.
The Lowe's car really wasn't that bad at the beginning of Happy Hour, although we couldn't run a super-fast time right out of the box like some of the guys could. We couldn't bust off a great lap until a few laps into the run, but then we were as good as most of the best cars. We felt pretty good about the car with 15 or 20 laps on the tires. We made a small change and put on sticker tires and went back out and tried it again. Unfortunately, we had made it too free and by that time, practice was over for the day.
On Sunday morning, we put the set-up back just the way we had it at the beginning of the Happy Hour session but tightened it up a bit. When the race started, we couldn't believe what Mike told us: the Lowe's Chevy was looser than it had been the day before. We struggled a bit from the beginning Sunday, but we got the car where it drove pretty well. It was too bad we were a lap down by that time.
When the green-flag pit stops cycled around, we tried to stay out a couple of laps and make sure the caution didn't fall at that time. If it had, we could have gotten back on the lead lap. We stayed out on the track three more laps than we had wanted to, but the caution didn't fall so we called Mike into the pits for tires and subsequently went down two laps. It's impossible to pit under green at Darlington and not lose a lap. We tried to make the car better for Mike the rest of the day but never seemed to get it quite to his liking.
It's no fun to just ride around all day and not finish well -- yes, it makes for a boring day for the team but we have to do it. Take Bristol for instance. A lot of people kept asking us why we spent so much time fixing the Lowe's Chevy after a lapped car wrecked us. We lost 120 laps fixing the car and then re-entered the race. We picked up six positions by repairing the car and finishing the race. If we had just loaded the wrecked car on the truck and dropped out of the race, we would have lost those six spots and been farther down in the points. We're 33rd in the points and want to get back in the 25th position because there are provisional starting positions and contingency money that you're eligible for when you're in the top 25. We're doing everything we can do to get back there. Sometimes you've got to endure the agony and make the best of a bad situation.
Lowe's Racing is really excited about going to Richmond this weekend for several reasons. First, Mike and the team usually qualify and run well at Richmond and we're hoping for the same this weekend. Secondly, the No. 31 Lowe's team is part of a Warner Bros./Looney Tunes promotional with Chevrolet for the Chevrolet Monte Carlo 400 on Saturday night. We're carrying a special paint scheme on the Lowe's Chevrolet -- the legendary Yosemite Sam. The car looks great and just like Yosemite Sam always did, we hope to chase everyone down.
We're taking the same Lowe's Chevrolet to Richmond that we raced in the first Richmond event last May. We re-worked a few things on it and took it to New Hampshire with Robby Gordon and we did extremely well there. We didn't qualify well but the car raced great. I think a lot of that was due to Robby's lack of experience at Loudon and the team trying to learn how to understand Robby's style. We feel strongly that we've got a good car for Richmond and we should have a good weekend. Mike has qualified on the pole at Richmond and usually races well there. We hope to put the Lowe's Yosemite Sam Chevy up front Saturday night at Richmond.
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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