Tech Q&A: Chad Knaus

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus burst on the NASCAR Winston Cup scene a year ago, when a promising preseason test session paid off with the Bud Pole Award for Johnson's first Daytona 500.

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The rest of the 2002 campaign did nothing to dull the luster of Johnson's incredible rookie season, in which he, Knaus and their Hendrick Motorsports Lowe's Chevrolet team produced three wins, four poles and fifth place in the standings.

At Daytona's Speedweeks 2003, Knaus, along with the rest of his Winston Cup crew chief contemporaries, is faced with common body mounting points, aerodynamic commonality and a rule change to decrease weight distribution to the rear of the cars.

During a break in NASCAR Preseason Thunder at Daytona International Speedway, Knaus sat down with NASCAR.com's Dave Rodman to discuss those topics, the new 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, defending their Daytona 500 pole and lessening Winston Cup cars' aerodynamic dependency.

With an entirely new body style, and with the new body location rule and template package -- how much is Speedweeks 2003 like going back to Square One for you and your team?

We're going way back in time, I can tell you that. We're at a very big disadvantage right now with the 48 team because we did not devote enough time last year to the development of the 2003 Monte Carlo, because we were concerned with the championship.

We focused on the 2002 Winston Cup championship and tried to finish in the top-five in points, and we are really, really way behind now that they have changed the bodies, made the new body location rule and made a weight distribution rule.

All that stuff is really hurting us right now so we're struggling a little bit.

By comparison, how would you say the 2003 Monte Carlo compares to the 2002 car with which you won the Bud Pole for the Daytona 500?

Right now I wish I had my old car (laughing). But I really think that the new Monte Carlo is going to be a better race car once we learn it -- once we understand its nuances, its little nooks and crannies and learn how to manipulate the body the way we need to it's going to be a better race car. But early on it's definitely going to be a disadvantage for us.

With the new car, is your set-up package for Bud Pole Qualifying basically the same?

Right now, for Daytona we don't know what the qualifying set-up is going to be because we're pretty far off of where we need to be right compared to the other teams -- so we really don't have that figured out -- we don't really know what the car wants.

But when we go to some of these other tracks, like your Las Vegas-type tracks or your Rockinghams, I feel like it is going to be very similar.

Were the 2003 cars supposed to be a little draggier, aerodynamically than last year and if that's so, are you surprised at how fast the fast cars were able to go in testing?

No, I'm not really surprised. Before we left Charlotte and came down here, we pretty much planned on needing to leave here after running the same lap time as we ran last year (when we won the pole) -- about a 49-flat.

That's what these guys are running, now, so it's just unfortunate we weren't able to get there. But I really expected to see about the same.

You're the defending pole winner for the Daytona 500. With the momentum that gives you for the 500, what are your expectations for 2003 and how likely is it that you can defend your pole?

Right now, it's not looking good for defending our pole, I can tell you that. We're definitely going to have to do some work before we come back for Speedweeks (but) we were on the phone the whole time we were in Daytona for the rest, letting the guys back in Charlotte getting prepared for some pretty heavy changes and we're going to come back to Daytona with our fingers crossed.

NASCAR changed the testing procedure for 2003 and knocked us from seven tests down to five, so we really can't afford to go to Talladega and test just for qualifying for the Daytona 500 -- it's not very smart. If we can't test our cars any more we'll just have to wait and see what happens when we come back.

A year ago you were fast in testing and came back, stayed fast and won the pole. What have you learned in the ensuing year and how has that affected your approach to testing and Speedweeks?

`Even when we were here in testing last year, we didn't show everything that we had. Yeah, we were the fastest car but we still had some that we held back. Well, we're by far not the fastest car here today but we've got more that we can do.

We've got more horsepower and more little tricks that we can do to the car. We're going to be better than where we are right now when we come back because we always try to hold back a little bit.

Talk about the weight limitations imposed on the rear of the race cars and how that will affect your qualifying package.

That is going to change qualifying a lot. We normally didn't run a lot of rear weight in the cars here at the speedways during the races because it really made the car loose --- hard to handle.

In qualifying we were able to run a lot of rear (weight) percentage in the car, which made the car faster (because) it dropped the rear spoiler out of the air.

By not having that, the set-ups that we had last year, we've kinda got to redevelopment them and apply what we learned last year to the new rules and try to get a little bit better.

NASCAR's John Darby has been talking about lessening the cars' aerodynamic dependencies and if downforce is lessened, possibly going to a softer tire. What's your feeling on that?

That's a catch-22 in my book. I have usually been pretty good with the aerodynamics on race cars, so I felt like that was an advantage of mine that I had over some of the other crew chiefs.

I may not be as good at, say, Martinsville, as some of these other crew chiefs are with the chassis set-ups, so I felt like it kinda evened out a little bit. Where I was strong, I excelled and where they were strong, they excelled.

	Credit: Autostock

Now, if they're taking away some of my aerodynamics that might hurt me a little bit and I might not be as strong at some of the tracks as I was.

There are some other crew chiefs out there that came into Winston Cup about the same time as I did -- when the importance of aerodynamics started to escalate and they learned to set up their cars with the aerodynamics and using the chassis set-ups along with that.

So I think it's going to hurt a lot of guys (but) it's going to be interesting and I don't know if I'm for it or against it but we'll have to wait and see how it plays out. It's another dimension to this 'young gun versus the old school' mentality.

It's not just springs and shocks anymore -- it's body attitude, it's fender angles, it's body position and things like that that make these cars what they are.

That's part of being in Winston Cup. It's the elite, the upper echelon. You're supposed to be able to have all these tools to work with -- kind of like Formula One, where they have infinite things they can adjust and work on.

If the car's got understeer (pushing) they can adjust the front wing a little bit -- they don't necessarily have to go change a front spring. That is kind of what Winston Cup was and they want to take that away.

They have their reasons for wanting to do it, but whether it's going to make racing better or not -- I don't think it is. You're still going to have your fast cars out front and your slow cars in the back.