Brake systems a concern for some at Martinsville

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Tight, tricky Martinsville Speedway has always been known as the greatest challenge for braking systems in the Nextel Cup Series, but according to Elliott Sadler, preparation and knowledge should prevent teams from having any issues in Sunday's Goody's Cool Orange 500.

Sadler said his Evernham Motorsports team has been working on the dynamics of its braking systems, including cooling them, for the better part of a year, so while some teams complained of brake issues in the Car of Tomorrow's debut last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, Sadler said his car was flawless.

"At Bristol some guys had their brakes get real hot and fade real quickly, but they had tape on the front of their cars," Sadler said. "With these COT cars the brake-cooling packages do not cool like our old cars do."

Sadler said assessing something like the airflow through the COT's nose area, where the brake ducts are located, isn't easy for a simple reason.

"There isn't any traffic in the wind tunnel," Sadler said. "And people didn't realize how much different these cars were going to handle, and how much brake you were going to have to use, including to turn them."

"I used more brakes at Bristol trying to get the car into the corner," said Jeff Gordon, who has seven Martinsville victories and figured the issue out enough to finished third at Bristol. "This new car seems to carry so much momentum and it was pretty loose getting into the corner at Bristol. We played it conservative and upgraded our brakes for that race."

Sadler said there was one other miscalculation made at Bristol that could never occur at Martinsville, due to its reputation.

"I think people tried to get away with intermediate brakes at Bristol to try to save weight, and people tried to tape up the fronts of their cars a little bit to try to get aerodynamic advantages," Sadler said. "And I think all that stuff bit them because the COT car does not have the cooling power that the old cars do."

"We still have an opening similar to the old style but with the splitter and nose the way it is, you have a different force of air going into it," said Robert Yates Racing crewman Mike Lingerfelt, a brake specialist on David Gilliland's No. 38 Ford.

"We're still allowed the ducts and everything so it's going to be a little bit of a learning process. But we feel confident in the package that we have and we feel confident that if we do have a problem we'll be able to work it out quickly."

That's exactly what Roush Racing crew chief Larry Carter did with his car and driver, Jamie McMurray. After McMurray lost his brakes halfway through the Bristol race, the team went to Caraway Speedway in Asheboro, N.C., to upgrade its systems. (Continued)