It's not who runs fastest, but slows down the best

MONTREAL -- Being fast doesn't matter much if you can't slow down to avoid the concrete walls.

According to most of the favorites, the winner of Saturday's NAPA Auto Parts 200 at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve won't be the driver with the best engine, the best handling or even the best tires.

Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

• Drivers impressed, cautious
• Notes: Home soil, for some
• Preview: Racing history, future
• By the Numbers: Int'l flavor
• Viewer's Guide: Montreal
• Garage Pass: North of Border

"The fastest guy doesn't necessarily win the race here at Montreal," open-wheel veteran Patrick Carpentier said. "Things can happen. The guy who is patient, just fast enough with good consistency, will be the guy who ends up at the front in the race."

The driver who visits Victory Lane on Saturday may be the one with the ability to hit the brake pedal hardest at the critical time. To a man, "managing the brakes" seems to be the catch phrase, especially since no one has come close to running the scheduled 74 laps in warmups.

Carpentier learned a big lesson Thursday morning in his first NASCAR practice.

"I went out with Scott [Pruett] and did quite a few laps, one behind the other," Carpentier said. "He was in front of me, and after five laps, I saw the big, black smoke coming out from under his car entering the hairpin. He was out of brakes and had to come into the pits. You're going to have to manage the car quite a bit."

Robby Gordon agreed with Carpentier's assessment of the situation. Two of his three Cup victories have come on road courses, so he should know.

"For us, it's going to be managing those brakes," Gordon said. "The guy who manages his brakes the best at the end of the day will be the guy that either wins the race or runs up front."

For example, Gordon said drivers will be able to brake late in some corners to make up time, but not all race long.

"The last chicane coming into the front straightaway, you can go to the bridge [before you brake], but you're not going to go to the bridge for 74 laps," Gordon said. "You try to make it 74 laps to the bridge, you're going to be out of brakes by Lap 15."

Ron Fellows has three Busch Series victories at Watkins Glen, so he's used to conserving his equipment. He said it's not the brake pads that the problem, it's the heat buildup.

"There's a few tricks you can do to save your brakes," Fellows said. "The deal here is you're not going to wear them out. They just get too hot. With a 3,400-pound car, we're going upwards of nearly 180 miles an hour -- and packed inside a 15-inch wheel, it's hard to disperse a lot of that heat.

"We're going to have as much ducting as NASCAR allows. But you just can't run hard all the time. You're going to have to find ways to manage the brakes and not be hard on them, lap after lap. There are going to be times when you're going to have to be easy on them."

Kevin Harvick is another driver concerned about having enough brakes to be competitive at the end.

"The brakes are going to fade," he said. "You're going to have to take care of your brakes. A lot of places that we go to, you don't have to manage your brakes hardly at all.

"It's definitely going to be a place where you manage your brakes to be able to compete at the end of the race. The straightaways are so long and it's on the verge of being in first gear in that last chicane before the start-finish line."