Inside the Garage: Reiser

Roush Fenway Racing crew chief Robbie Reiser comes to this weekend's USG Sheetrock 400 at the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., based on a couple things.

He and the driver of their No. 17 Ford, Matt Kenseth, have already won at an intermediate speedway this season, California Speedway in February; and they have a great history on these type of tracks. Plus, they've been consistent enough, despite battling a number of maladies, to sit third in the Nextel Cup driver and owner standings.

Q: From a crew chief's perspective, would you rather have a pretty structured, black-and-white rule book both for what you need to do, but also a finite penalty structure if you do something you shouldn't?

Reiser: Oh, man -- that's a hard question. I will tell you this: I have enjoyed all the years of being able to work on cars in the format that we've done it with the current car.

I do like the direction of the rules with the COT, but I do hate the COT in the way that it doesn't allow us to work on the cars anymore.

When you look at the car structure and the aero platform that they have -- all the things that they have going on with the COT -- it's just taken it so much out of our hands, to production-build that type of car instead of building a racecar to go fast, and I hate that part of it.

Maybe in a year from now, maybe I'll look at that different because it's the only thing we've got to work on and we'll understand that car and understand the rules more and find more areas to work in.

But right now, it looks like it's such a tight box that it's taken a lot of the fun -- a lot of the creativity that we've been able to do over the years, in working on the current cars and come up with different ideas to try to make our cars faster and work within the rules.

Now the rules are so tight, and you've got to look at it this way, too -- when you show up with that car and it's not right, you're going to get penalized, fined and maybe thrown out of the garage.

So that being said, and to answer your question, I like to be able to work on the cars and I like to have rules that are within a box -- but the box is too tight to allow us to work on the cars that we have now.

Does that make sense?

Q: Brian France recently said penalties may ratchet up to the point where they keep drivers or teams out of races, so is there any concern on the teams' part?

Reiser: The problem is this, and here's one thing that I look at it. We pay an inspection fee to show up here. The guys should be able to unload their cars, have their cars inspected and if they're not to the rules we should have the opportunity to change them to get them to where [NASCAR] wants them.

If we prepare our cars at the shop and we read our rule book and decided 'this is within the rules,' and we show up and [NASCAR] feels it's outside the line, we should get an opportunity to fix those cars.

We shouldn't get 100 points, $100,000 [penalties] and get thrown out of the garage. Now if we go and compete with those cars, and they are not within the guidelines, then I believe the penalty fits the crime But I do feel that you should be able to unload your cars, run 'em through inspection once, be able to have an opportunity to fix what you've got and then go race. I do believe that.

Q: What's the mindset when you go back to Chicagoland Speedway, a track that you've really excelled at?

Reiser: Well, we've had some really good runs there, previously, and I think that everybody gets more pumped up to go back to that type of racetrack and have success. Even though our finishes don't really show it, we've run up front there a lot and the guys are looking forward to going back.

Q: How do you get better for a racetrack like that, and where do you get better; assuming that you don't want to screw around with a setup that's been successful but since no one's standing still, you have to keep up?

Reiser: I think each season has its own twists and turns and obviously, we've got to show back up there with a competitive racecar and to be able to put a whole day together where we can win that race.

We've been so close there so many times and we just haven't been able to finish the deal. I think that this year we've struggled a little bit more with the handling of our racecars than we have in the past. So that'll make it challenging in itself -- and then not making mistakes during the race itself and calling a better race adds into it.

We had a race a couple years ago [2005] that we lost on a two-tire call, when I think Earnhardt [Jr.] took two tires and we took four and we ended up finishing second in that race and we dominated it all day. So I think that will play into it, along with how we study for the racetrack and how we get ready for the race itself is important, also.

Q: With the way the race last year ended, with Jeff Gordon knocking Matt out of the way and going on to win, whatever the fans might think about payback, is that something a professional race team never thinks about?

Reiser: Yeah, that's forgotten 10 minutes after it happens, because you've got to worry about the race that's at end [and that's the next race].

I'm sure if there's a situation -- or if that particular situation comes up again -- I'm sure it will cross people's minds, but those guys have got to go out there and do this week in and week out. We show up at the racetrack with the idea of winning, no matter who we've got to race against or what we've got to do, and that's how that goes.

Q: Jimmy Spencer always used to say he "never forgot." Not speaking of Matt, specifically, but do you think drivers in general have volumes and volumes of experiences they have with different drivers in different circumstances; and they never forget who's raced them clean or done them dirty?

Reiser: No question. You never forget things that happen to you in your lifetime, I don't care if it's at the racetrack or somewhere else. You always put that in the back of your memory and you race that certain way. I wouldn't think anybody else would think any differently than that. I think everybody looks at it the same way -- some things we've got to put away and go about your business. And other things, when it comes back across and you're back in that same situation, it always crosses your mind. You wouldn't be a human being if you said anything different.

Q: Setup-wise, handling-wise, what are you trying to get the car to do the most at Chicagoland, and how do you get it there?

Reiser: I think the biggest thing that we struggle with on the current cars is we're using the aero so much to turn the cars that we've been loose most of the season, all the way around. We've been trying to tighten the cars up and tighten the cars up and tighten the cars up and get them better for Matt. But as soon as you tighten them up, you take away the turn. So more than anything, probably getting a little better balance on what we have for the current cars is what our challenge is.

I think our cars are competitive and we've run good at a lot of those racetracks. We just haven't been able to step it up one notch -- the notch that we need to be a dominator on that style of racetrack with that car.

Q: What's the perfect racecar for Matt?

Reiser: You know, this is going to be a real easy question, because a perfect car for Matt is anywhere you want to take him, if you can get it to handle the way he wants it to handle, you've got an opportunity of winning. I don't care if it's Bristol, California or Daytona -- anywhere you want to go, he's got the ability to run well at every racetrack we go to. It's just what we do as a team, to give him the equipment he wants to go out and get the job done.

He's more than talented enough to win every one of these races; it's just that we, as a team, struggle at times to get him what he needs.

Q: Jack Roush had said his teams were going to begin testing more, so what's the test program been like for your team, and what's the summer looking like regarding testing?

Reiser: We've definitely tested more with the COT at Roush Fenway -- more than we have in the past. We have a group of people that are working on all sorts of things for COT racing coming up -- not so much looking at it as short term, but looking at it long term.

We have a group that's committed to just going off and doing seven-post testing and APG testing and track tests -- whatever our teams have to have to support them, we're off doing.

Q: When you look ahead to running the Car of Tomorrow on intermediate racetracks, are there any concerns about it?

Reiser: You know, you can be concerned about a lot of things, but here's the deal: It's a racecar and we've got to make it run. The rules aren't going to change and they're not going to take the car away tomorrow. It's the car that we've got to race, so we've got to go into the mile-and-a-half tracks and look at those with a lot of determination and wanting to get that car to run.

It's just going to require so much testing and so much time to make that what it is, and that's just what we've got to do -- no different than if the current car was a new car -- we'd have to handle that the same way.

With the COT, we've just got to put the time into it, run the car, learn things about and make it work on those mile-and-a-half tracks. Surely there are concerns, when you don't have travel in the [front suspensions] of the cars and you've got to work with the splitter and you've got to work with the wing.

These are all things that are unknowns to us that we're slowly getting caught up on, on the short tracks that will also create a lot of challenges on the bigger tracks, as we go there.

But it's a learning process for everyone, and everyone's in the same boat -- so we've just got to go there and do it.

Q: Maybe a silly question, because you guys are third in the points after running eight COT races, but how disruptive has it been having to go back and forth between the two styles of cars?

Reiser: It's been a lot of work for everybody, and I think everybody will tell you that. When you have a current car that you're still doing development work on and you're trying to make it better for each and every race -- because you do have five of those races in the Chase -- you've got to commit to that car also.

And then you come along with a brand-new car that nobody knows nothing about, and you've got to pretty much develop it from the ground-up. That requires a huge amount of work to get that up and running. So you actually have two challenges this year that I don't think everybody was quite set for in this garage and how much work it was going to be.

I don't care if you're running good or running bad -- it still required about the same amount of work.