Inside the Garage: Thomas

At only 33 years of age, with a background steeped in the engineering field and a resume that already includes employment stints at Petty Enterprises, Joe Gibbs Racing and Penske Racing South, it appears that Brandon Thomas has a bright future in NASCAR.

Thomas is currently serving as the crew chief for the No. 96 Chevrolet being driven by Tony Raines for Hall of Fame Racing. The car will be driven by J.J. Yeley next season

Q: The Nextel Cup Series heads to Atlanta Motor Speedway for this weekend's race. What do you like or not like about this track?

Thomas: I fear Atlanta [laughing]. I fear it heavily. It's been a bad track for us with Tony. And I don't know if that's because of the car we put under Tony, or Tony just not liking the track. I watched him run a Busch race there earlier in the year and he ran great in the Busch race. So I think it's more of the Cup car.

We struggle in Atlanta because the tire construction there, compared to other mile-and-a-half ovals, high-banked ovals, is very different. It's kind of a prehistoric tire now, compared to the rest of the Goodyear inventory -- one that we really don't have much for.

Q: Why is that?

Thomas: I don't know. You have to ask Goodyear. The sidewall construction just seems to be a lot different. ... It seems to be a lot different than what they run at a Charlotte or Texas. And because the pavement is so old at Atlanta, you run a couple quick laps and then you fall off really quickly. Atlanta is more classically like what Charlotte was before -- what I'll call good racetracks before -- where a guy could run off five or six really fast laps, and 10 laps later he's running slower. Now these tracks are paved where you might run your fastest lap on 55-lap-old tires. So you have to run a car really tripped out, really loose -- and you get races like what you had in Charlotte [recently].

Q: Where there is too little grip, you mean?

Thomas: Well, everybody spun out. We spun out and hit the wall in Turn 3. And I told Tony after the race, 'I'd love to be angry with you. But by the way the reigning Nextel Cup champion [Jimmie Johnson] just spun out and hit the wall; and [Matt] Kenseth, who is arguably one of the best in the business, spun out and hit the wall, what can I say?' All of these guys wrecked because of the way the racetrack and the tire combination worked together.

Q: So the moral of story is that Goodyear has some work to do?

Thomas: Honestly, it's not necessarily Goodyear's fault. It's the fact that they keep re-paving tracks -- making tracks smoother and better grip. Goodyear has to do something to allow the tire to live. You know, if it were my job to be the tire engineer, I'd probably do it a little bit differently than they do. But they get backed into a corner.

Q: Talk a little bit about this year. You guys have been running well at times and some stuff has happened, like Juan Montoya taking Raines out when he was running in the top 10 earlier this year at Martinsville?

Thomas: Obviously, it's very frustrating. You want to capitalize on opportunities when they come along. What you get really angry about are the things that get taken away from you that are out of your control. If we had pitted at the wrong time and knocked ourselves out of the top 10 [in the spring] at Martinsville, you can come back and be angry at yourself. The nonsense with Montoya, that was him reading a situation the week before the wrong way and then retaliating. I know that took a little bit of the wind out of Tony's sails when that happened. You can't dwell on those things, but they do affect you to some degree.

Q: You'll be back as crew chief next year with J.J. Yeley. Is the situation you now are in a little strang, with Raines being a lame-duck driver but seeming to have a good attitude about everything?

Thomas: It's probably the least strange that any of these types of situations could be. Tony is a stand-up guy to start with. He and I have become good friends, working together. So that has made it a lot easier. It's not one of these situations where you've got a guy who is really bitter about it and is trying to do everything he can to derail what we've got going on. Tony is not like that. That's just not his personality -- which is refreshing, because there are a lot of guys in this garage who would be like that. So it's actually made the situation the best it could possibly be.

Call to the Hall

The new owners of Hall of Fame Racing have a fresh face and agenda in place for 2008.

• Complete story, click here
• Yeley to drive 96 in 2008

From our standpoint, what we want to do is finish the year strong. We want to finish the year in the top 25 in points. That's our goal. And that's Tony's goal as well. It does good things for everybody involved if that happens.

Q: What do you see out of Yeley and what do you expect with him in the seat next year?

Thomas: Obviously, I feel like J.J., in his own mind, has a lot to prove. He's very hungry, and I think that's a good thing. I think that's a lot of motivation, a lot of drive. If you put that in the right spot mentally, then that's a really good thing.

We did go and test with him [last week] at Kentucky, just to kind of do a shakedown run and let him get to know everybody, and to let us get a little time in a COT on an intermediate track. ... I think it was a productive day. It could have gone better. It could have gone a lot worse. We learned some things technically that we were after. But we didn't get the car right where we wanted it, to his driving style or to his liking. But that stuff will come with time, I think. It was more about understanding what he's asking for; what he's going to talk about in the car. That was the goal there.

I think the biggest thing I see -- and I worked around him a little bit at Gibbs a couple of years ago, [when] he did a little bit of test driving for me in the R&D program there -- and what I see now is just a huge improvement in his technique and his skill behind the wheel. I think what he's done himself, working on his own craft, is really remarkable in terms of the smoothness of his steering and the way he races. That was really surprising. Quite honestly, we were really happy to see that.

Q: The Car of Tomorrow is so engineer-driven. With a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech, that's right in your wheelhouse -- but is there a concern that the sport is becoming too engineer-driven too fast?

Thomas: It's going to be up to the teams to adapt to that. Coming out of open-wheel racing, or coming out of other forms of racing that are very engineer-driven, that's definitely going to be an advantage to certain teams. And you see a lot of those guys now appearing. There are pretty major roles to be filled on various teams here. But in the end, it's still how you use those tools. A team that has all those tools but doesn't use them effectively, that shows up.

I think our approach is right. We're very engineer-driven. Even though we're a small team, a large percentage of our employees are engineers. As a group, we work on the development of the car, the setup of the car, the direction technically of everything we're trying to do. We spread it out; we don't lay it all on one person's shoulders. It's not driven solely by myself. I feel like I have a really smart group of people around me. But that's what it takes to succeed at this. Obviously we've got a fairly large distance to go to really call ourselves a success, but we feel like we're going about it the right way. And as we add more people who have what it takes, and we get more experience with the group that we have, I think it's only going to get better for us.

Q: How excited are you about the new HOF ownership group, which is led by Jeff Moorad and Tom Garfinkel, who also run Major League Baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks?

Thomas: These guys, I feel like their business approach to it and their vision for the business is very good. They want to take this to the level that obviously [former crew chief and current competition director] Philippe (Lopez) wanted it to go to when he started here, and myself when I came here. Nobody came here to be a single-car team that duked it out for 25th in points. We understand that there is a timeline to developing from the birth of a company until it has maturing to a level where it can be something more. Tom and Jeff, their sports background and their business background, I think allows them to take this team in that right direction. They're aggressively marketing what we are; they're aggressively trying to position us against these other teams, and showing what we have to offer, and what J.J. has to offer to sponsors. ... And I think that's a healthy direction for us.

Q: When it was announced they were assuming majority ownership, it was stated that if Joe Gibbs Racing went to Toyotas, your operation also would because of a working partnership between HOF and JGR that is in place to continue. Are you guys any closer to making a more definitive official announcement on which manufacturer you will work with in 2008?

Thomas: I honestly don't know. My job obviously is to run the car. That's up to Jeff and Tom and [general manager] Tyler [Epp] and Philippe to work on the business side of it. I'm sure they'll have an announcement soon.

Q: As a Virginia Tech grad, is it special racing at Martinsville like you did last week?

Thomas: It's special because I actually like racing at Martinsville. For me, it's my favorite track that I go to. ... I just like coming here. I really enjoy short-track racing. Strangely enough, it's something I didn't grow up around. My family didn't race short tracks. I didn't work on local Late Models or anything like that at all. But coming into NASCAR, I grew a real appreciation for it real quickly.