Tech Q&A: J. Fennig

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- The importance of matching a veteran crew chief with a young and rambunctious race car driver has been proven over the last two seasons at Roush Racing.

Prior to the 2002 season, team owner Jack Roush made the seemingly radical move of switching the chief mechanics for his lead driver, putting Ben Leslie with veteran Mark Martin and Jimmy Fennig with Kurt Busch, his youngest pilot.

	Jimmy Fennig

It nearly paid off with the ultimate prize as Martin and Leslie finished second in the championship to Tony Stewart. If not for a short dry spell midway through the season, Fennig and Busch might have done better than their third-place finish with the No. 97 Ford.

Last spring, Busch and Fennig scored a breakthrough victory at Bristol Motor Speedway when Busch elbowed hard-nosed veteran Jimmy Spencer aside and went on to win the Food City 500. Busch closed the year by winning three of the final five events.

On the eve of their return to Bristol's "Thunder Valley," Fennig sat down with NASCAR.com's Dave Rodman to discuss his strategy for concrete racetracks and how it is working with a young, aggressive driver.

Kurt Busch is an aggressive driver that is quickly learning how to manage his tires and race car to the best effect. Is a combination of those two traits the perfect thing to mesh at Bristol?

Yeah, it definitely is. One thing that Kurt is real good at is his ability to manage his car and conserve it to be good at the end of a run, or the end of a race. That is the key anywhere we go, but particularly so at Bristol.

How closely do you work with the engine tuners in general, and when you have some engine failures as we've seen lately, do you lobby for them to go in any particular direction?

No, I don't. All the decisions on engine tuning come straight from Jack Roush. If I was to say anything about it, it would be, 'Jack, don't worry about giving me any extra fuel mileage right now.' Usually, Jack makes all our decisions on (carburetor) jets and things like that.

In terms of momentum, you had a potential championship season last year with one down stretch. This year's already been up-and-down a bit and Sunday at Darlington was a chance to get some spectacular momentum going into Bristol. Is that critical or do you just aspire to get a top-10 every week and let the chips fall where they may?

Basically what I try to do is to win every race. Hopefully, if we can't win we're at least in a position for a top-five or a top-10. I go to the racetrack to win -- that's all there is to it.

Is your Bristol set-up a lock, or do you have an opportunity to throw some stuff at it to get it better? What's the most critical element there?

VIDEO CLIPS Kurt Busch holds on to win the 2002 Food City 500. Play video

The biggest thing with that is you can never sit still or stop thinking about what you can do to get better. You always have to keep working on your set-ups and adjusting them and refining them. You can't go back there with what you won with a year ago. Your set-ups and adjustments change every day so you constantly have to keep working on it.

At Bristol one of the biggest things you have to make sure of is that you don't bottom-out the chassis and that you maintain good fender clearances. To a degree you do that with springs and shocks but it goes back even further than that. You really pay attention to how you build your cars for Bristol, with more clearances built in.

What's your take on concrete racetracks in general and Bristol in particular?

I like Bristol. Concrete racetracks don't change as much as a typical asphalt racetrack will, in response to whatever the weather or temperature conditions are. Racing at Bristol is just like the Saturday night racing where we all grew up and came from, so that makes it special, too.

How would you rate the progress you and Kurt have made in little more than a year? Does it exceed your expectations?

Kurt is such an outstanding driver, there's really not too much that I can say about him. When he first came to Roush Racing I seen the talent he had. When Jack gave us the opportunity to work together last season, I really thought we could've got the championship. He is so talented he is just a pleasure to work with.

Where do you stand on the issue of decreasing the cars' aerodynamic dependency and going to a softer tire as a result?

NASCAR is going to keep changing the rules to enable us to put on a better show -- that's their job. Whatever they do and whenever they do it we have to go and make better race cars to work within the rules package we have. This is all about putting on the best race possible for the fans.

Would Kurt's driving style lend itself well to that?

Kurt is so talented that whatever rules package they give him he can adapt to it. There are no problems there.