Tech Q&A: Frank Stoddard

If there's any crew chief that should know the best way around New Hampshire International Speedway, it's Frank Stoddard.

Stoddard grew up in North Haverhill, N.H., and raced at NHIS in the Busch North Series before heading to Winston Cup. All he did once he got to NASCAR's top series was win at the flat mile track three times, all with Jeff Burton.

In 2000, Stoddard and Burton led all 300 laps of the Dura-Lube/Kmart 300.

Last year, Stoddard's current driver, Ward Burton, won at New Hampshire. You'd think putting the two together would result in a potent combination.

NASCAR.com staff writer Lee Montgomery recently spent a few minutes with Stoddard, talking about New Hampshire, its setup and Bill Davis Racing's transition from a Dodge factory team.

	Stoddard and driver Ward Burton have each visited Victroy Lane at New Hampshire, but not together. Credit: Autostock

Q: It's been a little over a month since all the stuff with Dodge went down. From an engineering standpoint, has much changed with the shop and the team?

Stoddard: "We really had our own staff anyway. Obviously, I'm pretty new to the deal, so how much involvement they had with Dodge, I'm really kind of sketchy on that. It hasn't really changed much. We've still got the engineers all along that we've had working with at the shop. It's just business as usual."

Q: Have you guys been to the wind tunnel since then?

Stoddard: "Yes."

Q: Sounds like nothing much has changed.

Stoddard: "Business as usual on all fronts really."

Q: There's new pavement again at New Hampshire. How do you approach that? Have you heard anything about the pavement?

Stoddard: "The setups and stuff on the racetrack have changed so much in the last couple years. It's been real hard to get a good grip on that place, to get a good handle on what the racetrack needs. I ran OK in the spring race and wasn't there in the fall to race.

"In the spring, I ran pretty good with Jeff. We were in the top five most of the day and then late we had a pit stop. Some guys did two, and a lot of the guys did four. Us and Kenseth came out about 15th or 16th. Kenseth drove up through to the front, and we couldn't get through traffic as well. We were running about eighth or ninth.

"I think the racetrack should be better this time. From the people I talked to up north, they said the groove has a smoother transition all the through the corner. It sounds like they made another small improvement."

Q: Would an extra day of practice help at all?

	Credit: Autostock

Stoddard: "Not really. It's not that dramatically different. It's just like it was. It's going to take pretty close to the same setup. It's just going to be a little bit easier for the drivers to drive the track than what it was before."

Q: You hear a lot about "rolling through the corners" there. How big of an issue is that?

Stoddard: "It's just the driver, how the driver drives the track. The faster you can run through the center, the less brake you're using. And the more throttle you've got in the center, you're going to be faster.

"I don't know that that's any different than any racetrack we go to. The guy who rolls the fastest through the corner here at Chicago will be in the top three. It'll be the same deal at New Hampshire.

"If you're slow in the middle of the corner, then you can't get off the corner. That means you're slow going to get to the corner. It's easy to say, 'I've got to roll through the center good.' But you've also got to get off the corner good.

"Certainly the key, probably, at any racetrack, is if you're turning good in the center good, it means you can pick up the throttle better, it means you're getting better straightaway speed.

"If you're turning that good in the center, you can drive it in the corner a little bit further, and the nose won't push up on you. That's the key to any racetrack. I don't think that Loudon, for better or for worse, is any different than most places we do."

Q: Is a drop-snout car a good alternative there?

	Stoddard says he and Burton will basically be starting from scratch this year at NHIS. Credit: Autostock

Stoddard: "There certainly have been drop-snouts that have run there in the past, and I'm sure there'll be some there this time. It's just a preference of driver and team. There'll probably be six to 10 drop-snout cars this weekend. I could be off. There could be 42 of them."

Q: Will you guys run one?

Stoddard: "No, we won't have one up there this time. I'd say in general, six to eight cars might."

Q: Why are you guys not running one? What's the preference?

Stoddard: "We probably don't have a preference, other than it limits you on other places you would choose to run the car. Some teams have elected not to build them just because it doesn't make the cars versatile."

Q: You led 300 laps there a few years ago. How radically different is the setup from then? Obviously, that was a restrictor-plate race.

Stoddard: "It's quite a bit different, really. That was about the point where it was really starting to change a lot. That was 2000. The next year was when the huge change came with the tires and everything else. Because how the tire has changed is what's really changed it more than anything else. I won't have a car that can lead 300 laps up there this time, I can assure you."

Q: Ward won last year. Obviously, he's involved in the setup, so you two guys together should be a force up there.

Stoddard: "Actually, he doesn't have any notes from what he did up there last year. We'll be starting form scratch on that. Unfortunately, Tommy (Baldwin) took most of that stuff with him (when he left Bill Davis Racing last year) -- or maybe fortunately, I don't know. He did anyway. We'll just go off some of the stuff we've used at Martinsville and Richmond and try to get the thing as close as we can."

Q: New Hampshire is a home track for you and a lot of guys. There seems to be more of a bond between New England guys and that track than some other places. Why is that?

Stoddard: "I guess the gods have been looking down upon us. Ricky Craven, any time he needs a career highlight or get him back to feeling like he should belong in Winston Cup, he goes there and sits on the pole or runs well. If he's got 20 career highlights, 10 of them have come from New Hampshire International.

ALSO  •  Frank Stoddard's Crew Chief Page  •  Ward Burton's Driver Page  •  Bill Davis Racing

"We certainly probably had a little bit of an advantage early on, the first two or three years. I don't think there's any question that Ricky knew how to get around that racetrack. He'd run a lot of laps in a Busch North car, and I think that helped him a lot. When you talked about rolling through the center -- if you can take a driver up there and run all day, practice by yourself all day and do nothing on the setup, starting in the morning with a certain lap time, by the end of the day, certainly a driver alone, without making an adjustment on the car, will be able to pick up two or three tenths. He had that a little bit of a gain.

"From my standpoint, I had run there pretty well in Busch North cars and stuff, had a pretty good idea what the tires could or could not take. Jeff had run there once before we went there originally. He had run decent there. For whatever reason, the setup I had run on the Busch North car was almost spot-on what I was able to run in the Winston Cup car. We just took off. It just ran for us. For a while there, nobody could really find the combination we had. It made it pretty easy to go up there and run competitively."

Q: This has got nothing to do with tech, but what's the best place to get lobster?

Stoddard: "We're having some lobster brought in to be cooked. I used to go to Makris Lobster (& Seafood) House (in Concord, N.H.). That's pretty good. But there's a lot of places in the Portsmouth area. That's probably the best place."