Ricky Rudd has had success at Fontana, but has yet to win there. Credit: Autostock
By Ricky Rudd, Special to SI.com
April 25, 2003
1:50 PM EDT (1750 GMT)
Winston Cup makes the first of two appearances on the West Coast this weekend when it visits California Speedway. Ricky Rudd, driver of the No. 21 Motorcraft Racing Ford Taurus, has three top-five and four top-10 finishes on the 2-mile D-shaped oval in six years.
California is a track I've always enjoyed running. You hear a lot of people compare it to Michigan, but to me that's not a good comparison. You have to handle the car a little bit better at California than at Michigan. Turns 3 and 4 are similar to Michigan, but Turns 1 and 2 are very different.
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California is a track that takes a lot of horsepower, and a good handling race car. We've been fortunate that we've run pretty well there every year, but there is no big secret to it. You drive off into Turns 1 and 2 and get the car driving well enough to stay right on the bottom of the race track. You have a wide arc entry into the corner, and as you enter Turn 1, roll out of the throttle and use very, very light brake pressure -- just enough to know that you have brakes there. Then you are out of the throttle just a couple of seconds.
Similar to all of the big tracks that have the big radius corners, you want to keep your momentum going, keeping speed so that when you roll into the backstretch straightaway you are up to speed. You drive it right in against the bottom of the white line and try to hold it there. As you are making the exit you want to unwind the steering wheel and let the car build acceleration and RPMs as quickly as possible. That means you use up pretty much every inch of the race track and drive it out against the fence on the long, flat backstretch.
There is a really nice entry into Turn 3. The way the track was designed, it has a gradual banking angle as you enter the corner which makes for pretty good racing. You can enter that corner low or high; two-wide is not a big issue.
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Once you arrive in the middle of that corner, the fast way in qualifying trim and on fresh tires is on the bottom, getting the car to stick with bite and keeping it rolling off the corner and into the front straightaway. You tend to fight a push off that corner because the front end doesn't want to stick as well as you need it to a lot of times.
If you get too greedy and try to run too fast through that corner and keep too much momentum going it won't show up until you get to the exit right as you're coming into the straightaway. And if you get a little overly aggressive, it will kill your lap time. That is because right at the last minute when you roll into that straightaway -- where you need to be accelerating -- you will have to lift the throttle to keep the front end from smacking the fence.
So the trick is to keep the momentum going without having to lift the throttle on a late exit and use that momentum down that long front straightaway.
It is a long front straightaway -- and a lot of fun. You will run three-, four-, five-wide there all day and there is a lot of dicing going on. This is a track you will see guys go down the front straightaway and they'll start off wide against the fence. Then they will come all the way down to the inside of the apron and swoop back up again as you enter Turn 1 -- right up against the fence and then that wide arc as you enter the turn.
As the race progresses and the track gives up grip, the cars have a tendency to want to move up the race track. That's when you see some good racing because some cars can continue to run on the bottom, but also cars will get to running really fast about the middle or three-quarter mark. Not all the way up against the fence, but about three-quarters of the way and then a very late exit right up against the fence.
Ricky Rudd drives the No. 21 Motorcraft Racing Ford Taurus owned by Wood Brothers Racing.
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