Inside the Garage with 29's Berrier

Richard Childress Racing crew chief Todd Berrier has been around the sport long enough to see a bunch of peaks and valleys.

And with the series traveling this weekend to tricky old Darlington Raceway in South Carolina he, his No. 29 Chevrolet's crew and driver Kevin Harvick will more than likely get to experience plenty of both in the course of just three days.

Q: Kevin's racing a little bit less this year than he did last season, when he won the Busch Series and was fourth in Nextel Cup, so what's his mood been like, because he always said he enjoyed it more when he was racing more?

Berrier: I'd rather him be racing all the time. I don't think he needs any time off, because he's better to be around when he's really busy.

I don't know if he'd be in more trouble if he had more time on his hands, but the less time you have to think, sometimes, the more other people can do what they need to do.

The more time he has, the more time he has to dig into his personal business, whether it's KHI [Kevin Harvick Inc. racing operation] or other different things, whereas, if he was racing, the people doing the deal could probably just do it.

I'm not saying his management style is bad, by any means. I'm just saying I know how it works when Richard [Childress] is around. The busier them people are, the owners and all that stuff, the better off we are as workers.

The peasants of the world are better, you know?

Q: Speaking of moods, what was your take on that deal at Talladega with Kevin and Jamie McMurray, for which they were fined $25,000 each and each placed on probation?

Berrier: I did not see it happening. We had that DirecTV HotPass on the pit cart, so I saw the wreck part of it where it looked like, with Stewart that Jamie had maybe run both of them up into the wall -- at least I think Kevin, at that point, thought he did.

Whatever happened after that, we didn't see any of that, and Kevin didn't say anything on the radio -- or might have said something like "the 26 [McMurray] just wrecked us both" or something to that effect. I'm not sure.

Do I ever come over the radio and tell him not to do something [like that]? No. Maybe I should, but at the end of the day I make my choices and try to make them to the best of my ability.

And sometimes I say things and do things that I have to take back -- and you don't want to do that, but that's just part of life. And I think it's just to each his own.

We're getting paid to do a job or getting paid to do what we do, and at the time we do things that we think are right. Maybe they turn out to be a little different, but you know what? That's part of it and we're fortunate enough that we can make decisions and turn around and come back on 'em so I don't think it's no big deal.

Q: How's the Car of Tomorrow going to play at Darlington this weekend?

'We just didn't communicate well'

Kevin Harvick was leading the Crown Royal 400 at Richmond when he pitted, then ran into David Ragan trying to exit.

• Complete story, click here
• Harvick fined for incident

Berrier: How's the COT going to play at Darlington? I really think, at the end of a fuel run, you'll be able to go out there and run faster in a rental car. I'm being perfectly honest with you.

I think it's going to be miserably slow. But, I don't honestly know. I think the race at Phoenix, where we were at another mile place; I think it was rather boring from my perspective.

Then I watched the Busch race at Richmond [last] Friday night and I thought it was rather good. I'm hoping the same thing plays out for [the Car of Tomorrow] -- the thing is just so top-heavy and the center of gravity is so high.

There's nothing about it that you would build, intentionally that way to go to Darlington and run fast -- or anyplace else, for that matter. Darlington is just going to be way worse because the tires fall off so much.

I feel like it's going to be miserable -- miserably ugly. But I might be 100 percent wrong.

Q: So the issue of the car turning in the center of the corner isn't better?

Berrier: Absolutely not. We haven't made major changes to the car, and we need to. I think everybody in this garage needs to. The only thing we can do is go to a Milwaukee or a Lakeland or somewhere, and test on Hoosier tires, which are entirely different.

Nothing applies to what we're doing, so we're all in a pretty tight box because of the tire situation. I think NASCAR would have better races with the Car of Tomorrow if we had tires, where we could test, which represented and were replications of what we race.

I think we could make a better show at a Darlington, even -- or wherever, if we could test. We wouldn't even have to go to Darlington and test. We could go to Rockingham, but on a Hoosier tire it doesn't really do you justice like it would on a tire like we were gonna race at Darlington.

It's just like going to Iowa to test for Richmond. You need something, tire-wise, because the tire is the only thing touching the ground and it's the only thing that matters.

It's the biggest thing to these cars and we don't have [test tires] to make [the COT] better.

Q: Would there be any benefit, for the Car of Tomorrow races, to come a day early and have an open test day, if your team wanted to take advantage of it?

Berrier: Yeah, I think there would be a benefit to that. I think there are a lot of people in this garage that are probably worried about Darlington, because we have not been anywhere like that.

We know the characteristics of the car, we know the characteristics of Darlington and I'm thinking if we had all day on Thursday and as many tires as we needed [we'd be better off].

Like, we're going to go there on Friday and get four sets of tires. In five laps, each set's going to be done. If you're not spot-on when you get there, we're going to be in trouble.

I think everybody's talked to NASCAR about it. I don't know what their stand is on it, but I think their stand is probably they're saying 'save money,' or this, that and the other.

But at the end of the day, this year is not going to save any money. I think we're probably going to spend 30 percent more this year than we did last year -- maybe even more than that -- due to this car.

Long-term, could the car save us money? Yeah, but are we going to go back to Pennzoil and Shell or whomever and say 'we don't need your five million dollars, we only need four? That's not going to change.

So I think that we need to be able to go to the tracks early, buy tires and test so we make the shows to where we keep putting people in the stands. That's the objective here.

Q: But we're talking racers here, so even if the cars' handling goes off, are we going to have some black walls at that place by the time 500 miles is over Saturday night?

Berrier: We're going to have some torn-up stuff. I think every car there will have some damage. There ain't no way the guy that wins the race won't have the [right] side tore off of the thing.

Luckily we got that foam in there and I think that will take some of the shock away.

Q: I know you had some misgivings about the Car of Tomorrow back in January, to your mind, what's the biggest thing that's been resolved with it in these first four races?

Berrier: Among the things that I thought were wrong with the car at the beginning of the year, the right-side foam, was something I thought was going to give us trouble -- but it took both Matt Kenseth and us both having trouble to really sink home that it was going to be trouble.

So that's resolved and that's not an issue any more.

Q: So what's the biggest ongoing issue?

Berrier: The things still don't have any front downforce. That hasn't been resolved and I don't know what we can do to resolve that. But there's a lot of talking going on through the garage and through NASCAR -- and I think they're listening.

They realize, maybe, that there's a problem with the center of gravity being higher and with the cars not turning, or rolling over too much and not having enough front downforce.

I do think that in the near future, when June or July comes and they say you're going to run these things at mile-and-a-halfs next year that they're going to have to take some really big steps to making the car turn.

So there will be some changes that come to add front downforce to the things.

Q: As a crew chief and a racecar engineer, what would you do to fix that, if you had free rein?

Berrier: Honestly, I don't know. I know what I would do if they said the cars still had to be symmetric and not look like they're cocked-around and not this, that and the other. I think the body has to be slid forward a fair amount on the car.

We have a tremendous amount of overhang in the rear and none in the front and I think there are some things we have to do to get overhang over the front tires. I just don't know how and how much it would cost.

Did we all spend tens of millions of dollars on templates and all these things, to say they're all no good any more? I don't think NASCAR is ready for all the bad press they're going to get from that.

So I don't know how the fix is going to come. Now, would they raise the splitter where we could travel the front of the cars more? Maybe that's an easy fix that wouldn't cost anybody a whole lot of anything.

So maybe there are some things like that that could be done. It's just a case where we could change every template on this [COT] and it would still be cheaper than running this car [COT as it is now] and the current car, parallel next year.

But I don't know what everybody is thinking, so you'll have to go back to what NASCAR's objective is, I think.

Q: What's been the most pleasant surprise about the Car of Tomorrow; now that you've actually run it a little bit?

Berrier: I don't know that there have been any surprises, at all. I think more so maybe us as competitors are not surprised -- and maybe NASCAR is surprised -- that the guys that were winning races are still winning races.

The ones that are missing races are still missing races. I think they thought that the Car of Tomorrow was going to fix their programs and change all that, so I think that's more surprising on NASCAR's side of things than it was for us, on the competitors' side of things.

When you go to Darlington, history's going to repeat itself. Jeff Gordon is going to be good, just like when you go to Richmond, history's going to repeat itself and Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick are going to be good.

History is history, it got that way for a reason and you're not going to be able to change it.