Jeff Gordon has led more laps at Infineon Raceway than any other driver. Credit: Autostock

Getting cars road ready as unique as race itself

Some wonder if Sonoma, Watkins Glen have run their course

NASCAR claims it wants to save its teams money, a proposition most garage folk consider utterly impossible. Take away a man's ability to spend a million here, he'll spend two million over there, they say.

They've limited testing to six NASCAR-specified venues, leaving inexperienced drivers no way to target must-improve tracks.

Tires can inflate the costs at road courses. Credit: Autostock

NASCAR has also instituted a tire-leasing policy that requires teams to return every tire they "rent" throughout the weekend -- used or not. Doesn't seem this policy saves teams much money.

A slew of garage sources told NASCAR.COM that teams are repaid but a fraction of the original cost for tires returned unused. A new Goodyear Racing Eagle runs $400. If it never sees pavement, the team is only repaid $125.

On they trudge. It's all about the show, after all. And if the show remains beneficial, the show will go on. The Car of Tomorrow will help tremendously, they say, partly by streamlining parts and pieces for use at multiple types of tracks.

That is primarily how road-course racing adds expense -- specific parts and pieces must be manufactured.

Is the road-course portion of the show beneficial? Or has spending time and resources on a pair of races that have minimal impact on the season's outcome run its course, so to speak?

It very much depends who is asked, and his respective skill level in said trade. Adept road racers are all for it. Everyone else would just as soon trade Watkins Glen, for say, Kentucky Speedway.

"I think everybody'd much rather be there than they would at Watkins Glen or Sears Point," Jeremy Mayfield said. "So that being said, I don't think [road racing] does belong.

"It's not what these cars are all about. I don't really know how many fans really like watching road courses on TV, or at the racetrack for that matter."

All the (road) rage

Infineon Raceway president Steven Page would, of course, disagree with Mayfield's assessment. Road-course racing, he says, is all the rage in Northern California.

Northern California likes its wine ... and its road racing. Credit: Autostock

And while he won't divulge attendance figures ("corporate policy") he does say Sonoma has seen steady growth throughout the past decade. Tickets sales are up from last year. Last year was up from '04 and so on.

"We've been growing consistently," Page said. "This is still a reasonably new market for stock-car racing, so there's a lot more upside and a lot more people discovering the sport than there are in some of the markets that are a little more mature."

The sport's overall growth is a major contributing factor to Infineon's continued progress.

And importance.

"When I first came here 15 years ago, from the competitors' standpoint we were perceived as a necessary evil," Page said. "You had a few guys that were road-course specialists and everybody else said let's try to survive it and move on."

Ten years ago teams pulled out the Martinsville car, shifted the fuel-filler from the right side of the car to the left, and the battery from left to right, and took off to the road course. The degree of focus a team applied, the competitive element seen at ovals, didn't transfer.

These days it's a bit different.

"Every race is the same amount of points, and the championship is ultimately won on that accumulation of points all year long," Nextel Cup director John Darby said. "The part of it that has become serious is that the teams now take road-course racing seriously."

"It's still 180 points," said Lance McGrew, crew chief for Brian Vickers and the No. 25 Chevrolet. "We test for it. We build a car for it. We work on special braking systems. It pays just as many points as Michigan or Charlotte or anywhere else. Hell yeah, it's important."

That emphasis has improved the quality of Nextel Cup Series road-course racing. But there is still only a small percentage of drivers capable of going to Victory Lane.

"Maybe five out of the 43 cars have a chance," Scott Riggs said.

Kings of the road

A five-time road-course winner, Tony Stewart is invariably among the contingent to which Riggs is referring. His crew chief, Greg Zipadelli, said it comes down to desire.

	Tony Stewart is the defending winner at both road-course tracks. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Most road-course wins (Sonoma & Watkins Glen only) No. Driver Sonoma W.G. 8 J. Gordon 4 4 5 T. Stewart 2 3 4 M. Martin 1 3 4 R. Rudd 2 2 4 R. Wallace 2 2 3 E. Irvan 2 1 2 G. Bodine 1 1 2 R. Gordon 1 1 1 D. Allison 1 0 1 Buck Baker 0 1 1 D. Earnhardt 1 0 1 M. Panch 0 1 1 S. Park 0 1 1 K. Petty 0 1 1 T. Richmond 0 1 1 B. Wade 0 1

"I think a lot is mentality," Zipadelli said. "If you don't think you can you're not going to. Let me tell you. It's not money.

"A lot of it goes back to fundamentals. Just like Martinsville does. Just like Richmond. Having a driver that wants to do it, is willing to adapt and listen and work on his part of it, and having a team that's willing to work on it is the key.

"Some drivers in the sport are more adaptable."

Riggs described the intricacies of that adaptability well.

"When you're racing round tracks you drive by feel, by the seat of your pants," he said. "You drive by how the car feels under you, the arc you make, what it does in the corner, off the gas, back in the gas, all that.

"When you go to road-course racing, what I have to concentrate on is looking further ahead, hitting your marks -- instead of within a foot or two, within inches -- and don't worry about what it feels like because it's more what your eyes are seeing.

"You still have to drive by feel. You can't just go out there and mat the throttle and spin it out. But the feel is more robotic. It's robotic driving -- I turn in here, get on the brake here. No matter what it feels like. You need to make sure the car stays under you throughout that uncomfortable situation."

McGrew took it a step further.

"The driver is the most important part of road-course racing, and I don't believe he's always the most important part of oval-track racing," McGrew said.

"Not that he's not an important part [of oval racing]. But he may not be the most important part. He is at a road course. You can put a good road-course racer in a mediocre car and run well. You can't do that in an oval-track car."

With eight combined victories at Sonoma and Watkins Glen, Jeff Gordon is widely considered the best road-course driver in stock-car racing history. That wasn't always the case.

"The first time Jeff Gordon ran on [Infineon Raceway], which was 1993, he was pretty shaky," Page said. "And I would say from '94 on, he has been just amazing. There is nobody in the field that attacks this track more effectively than he does. He's the best. No-brainer."

Road and oval track

Though road-course machines are fundamentally quite different from those driven on oval tracks, teams say road-course racing doesn't create inordinate added expense for Nextel Cup team owners.

"Road-course racing isn't so much more expensive," said Bootie Barker, crew chief for Jeff Green and the No. 66 Chevrolet. "The only reason it's more expensive than a standard car is because you have to build unique parts."

John Darby tells teams what they can and cannot do. Credit: Autostock

Darby, Barker and Zipadelli reeled off a laundry list of variances between road-course cars and oval-track cars, including symmetrical A-frames, different fuel pickup, an alternative chassis and tweaked body.

Darby said the rulebook permits teams to move parts and pieces right to left, such as batteries and weight. Both sides of the car must weigh a minimum of 1,600 pounds. The quarter-panel heights are equal on road courses, while on oval tracks they differ greatly.

Zipadelli said teams run the same transmission, though with a different shaft and gears. He said the rear-end gear is the same run at Richmond. Cambers are different. Casters, too.

It's like a short-track car with a reverse track bar, he said. The truck arms are the same, other than the location where the track bar bolts to the trailing arms is on the other side.

It all sounds quite complicated to the laymen. But apparently it's not.

"We make the [oval-track] cars essentially biased left with weight, aero and geometry," Barker said. "We cheat them left, want them to go left. Road-course is just more square."

"I do know we have two or three special [road-course] cars, and put a lot of extra effort into brakes and things like that," Gordon said. "But I'd say it's nothing compared to some of the other major expenses."

See: Restrictor plate racing.

"A road racecar is obviously a little more expensive than what you'd take to Martinsville, but it's a whole lot cheaper than what we race at Daytona and Talladega," Darby said.

Restricted access

Restrictor plate racing is unquestionably the most expensive proposition facing team owners.

"When you go to a speedway you have a ton more man hours," Barker said. "It's much more meticulous and much more abstract."

Getting a car ready for a road course can be an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. Credit: Autostock

All year long, teams work tirelessly to create downforce. But at Daytona and Talladega, they seek the exact opposite formula: How to make this big hunk of steel slide through the air like an arrow shot from a bow?

A fender is still a fender and a hood a hood, but perfection is required. Pinpoint attention to detail separates fifth from 35th.

"It's the details stuff, and the detail stuff requires extra labor, which requires extra money," Darby explained. "It's not the specific parts and pieces; it's the amount of time you spend on them.

"Every nut and bolt is ground and polished. It's an anal thing. It's a process. And the more time you spend filing, sanding, rubbing, polishing drives the expense up."

Not to mention wind-tunnel time. Sneezing on a plate car is considered sinful. Conversely, road-course cars are built to withstand significant torture. Again, that creates some added expense, though minimal by comparison to that required of speedway cars.

"I can't believe two road-course races equal one-quarter of one plate race in expense," Zipadelli said.

"How many times do we put bodies on? How many times do we go to the wind tunnel? How much money have we spent in R&D in our motor department?"

Speaking of engines, road courses present a much higher rate of failure than do oval tracks, according to Hendrick Motorsports engine guru Scott Maxim.

Why? Simple. Increased driver input, i.e. shifting.

"There's definitely a lot more opportunity for a problem, either from a part breaking, which would cause an engine to over-speed, or the many different opportunities during the course of a lap for driver-input -- either a missed upshift or downshift, could cause an engine failure," Maxim said.

"At an oval track our biggest concern is the intensity of the stress the engine's put under, which is how fast you're going and for how long."

To account for the potential rev-spike, Maxim said many teams build an RPM cushion into the engines configuration. Also, they might build a warning-light system into the car to give the driver visual notification of a spike.

In four career road-course starts Scott Riggs' best finish is 23rd, at Watkins Glen. Credit: Autostock

Transmissions have improved greatly throughout the years, so the clutch-action required of drivers 10 years ago is no longer necessary. And above all else, the drivers have improved.

"Over the years you've gotten a much higher percentage of the field that are really capable drivers on a road course now," Page said. "Fifteen years ago you looked at a 43-car field and saw that five or six guys could win.

"Now, I think you can look pretty deep in the field before you find somebody that isn't a competent enough driver on a road course that they wouldn't have a shot to win."

Again, Riggs disagrees. The feeder-system has disallowed him, and competitors that have taken a similar timeline to the Nextel Cup Series, from developing fundamental road-course skills.

"NASCAR racing started at round tracks, and that's how we all came up through [the ranks]," Riggs said. "When I came to the Truck Series, [NASCAR] dropped road-course racing. The year I moved to the Busch Series they dropped road-course racing.

"I move to the Cup level, and I'm racing against these guys who not only have tons of road-course experience, but they have cars and people that are dedicated to doing nothing but road-course racing. It's tough for me. I'm on a huge learning curve every year -- and I only get two chances to improve that."

Difficult test

The new testing policy disallows drivers like Riggs to take his Nextel Cup car to Infineon Raceway in search of new test data. As far as sanctioned tracks go, NASCAR only allows its Cup teams to test at Daytona, Las Vegas, Richmond, Lowe's, Indianapolis and Homestead. No short tracks. No road courses.

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And while a solid test session at Greenville-Pickens Speedway will help a team unload at Martinsville confident, a great test at Virginia International Raceway -- the preferred road-course testing facility -- offers no comfort whatsoever in regards to information-gathered for Infineon.

"You don't go to VIR and tune your car for Watkins Glen or Sears Point," Zipadelli said. "I go there to get my driver back in the mental state of shifting, braking, coordination. Like batting practice."

"With the testing rules, I can't learn the tracks any better," Riggs said. "These guys already know it, they've already been there for years and years and years. We only race once at each [road course], so there's no way to get experience."

Asked to expound, Riggs offered the following explanation.

"I'm still going to road courses and learning to be better myself, working on me, much less being able to go there and knowing what I need to feel and saying, 'OK, here's what we need to do to make this car better,'" he said.

"We go [test VIR] and I make laps and try to get better. We'll make a change and see if I can feel it, but 85 percent of the time I can't because I don't have a set thing in mind about how it needs to feel.

"Our teams look at it like, I just want to go there and have a good finish. But teams like Jeff Gordon's and Tony Stewart's, and even Robby Gordon, those guys go there with a shot to win. It's tough. If they took them [road courses] away it wouldn't hurt my feelings at all."

Chase race

Gordon, on the other hand, wouldn't mind a couple more. And at the very least, he'd like to see one instituted into the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

"It's a uniqueness to our sport that adds something that really completes the whole championship," Gordon said. "I wish we had a road course in the final 10 [races].

"To be the champion in this series you already have to be good at short tracks, superspeedways, and when you add in road courses into that factor it only makes the championship that much more prestigious."

A road-course Chase race would bring a smile to Jeff Gordon's face. Credit: Autostock

Most folks agree with Gordon, using the logic under the Chase format, a true champion should be required to perform on all types of tracks.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is not one of them.

"I don't like it that much," Junior chuckled. "In a perfect world it would be in the Chase, and I think it deserves a spot much more than a plate track, where it's pretty much rolling the dice.

"In a road course you are in control of where you finish. In a perfect world it should be in there, but I believe most drivers and teams rather it not be in there. To the true enthusiast it would be."

Zipadelli and Barker, for example.

"I'd like to see a little more difference than what we have in the Chase to make it a little more interesting," Zipadelli said. "Make the best team, the best driver, perform in all different forms of it. It'd make it better.

"You go to a road course it's an easy place to break stuff, an easy place to make a mistake and you have a bad day. It would make it interesting."

Ditto for Barker.

"If you're going to have a champion, you need a road course, you need a short track, you need a speedway, you need a 2-mile 18-degreer, you need a mile-and-a-half, pretty-banked one. You need Martinsville," Barker said.

"Reason I say that is, some of those tracks are more [about] strong teams. Some are more [about] strong drivers. You need the best team and man. That said, yes we need them.

"But two is enough. I know it's not easy to switch dates, but they need to rotate things in and out or something. I realize it's complicated, but it'd be cool."

Darby said he doesn't think NASCAR has any intention of adding a road course to the Chase lineup, at least not anytime soon.

"I think which racetracks are in the Chase is not a big issue," Darby said. "There's still enough of a Heinz 57 mix there. You might be right, in that if there's one of those ingredients missing that we look at all year, it would be a road course.

"Ultimately, the only way that could happen would be some pretty severe schedule realignments, and I don't know if that's in our future or not."

Page said he's never lobbied NASCAR for a position among the final 10 races on the schedule. Says he doesn't want one, even.

"We've been in this time of year for so long it's institutionalized," Page said. "Being in the Chase obviously gives you a little higher profile and attention, but it's not really something we've looked at seriously."

Watkins Glen, Gordon said, gets his nod as the desired Chase road course because it's less technical. In short, it's easier.

"Watkins Glen. It's a road course that's not such a finesse type of racetrack," he said. "It has some oval characteristics. It's just not the most difficult road course in the world.

"You see everybody run a little bit better at Watkins Glen. You don't see as many guys go off course there. Sonoma is a very challenging road course, and it would be a little too much of a challenge in the last 10."

Down the road

All said, most everyone asked agrees road courses have an established place in the Nextel Cup Series.

"It's an awful lot of fun and sure mixes things up," Zipadelli said. "These mile-and-a-half racetracks, I understand are great on the sponsorship side, great to get people in, great for people to watch. But the Martinsvilles and the road courses, for us it sure is nice to have a little bit of change.

"It gives you a break, gets you going in a completely different direction and keeps your mind fresh."

Believe it or not, road-course racing also allows teams to get caught up.

"The best thing sometimes when you're not doing well is a change of pace that allows you to get caught up," Zipadelli added. "This stretch gives you three or four weeks to get the mile-and-a-half program back going.

"The cost of it? It is what it is. There's not a lot more you [can] do. It's short-track brakes. We're running the same car we've run for years. It's [number] 048, and we're on 141. That's how old this car is.

"And I don't see the road courses going anywhere, so we'll keep on using it."