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.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. led Saturday's Happy Hour practice in his No. 8 Chevrolet, but complained of a vibration in his car's braking system that he said was almost causing him to crash in the middle of the speedway's turns.

On his in-car radio, a crewman acknowledged it might be caused by brake-cooling issues.

"I'm a little worried that we might not have these cars understood as far as ducting the brakes and cooling the brakes, yet," Earnhardt said. "That is sort of trial and error [so Sunday] is going to be a day of learning a lot, for us."

Lingerfelt preached a familiar gospel as far as saving brakes at Martinsville.

"The easiest way to be easy on the brakes is to back your corner up a little bit and let it roll in [to] the corner instead of stabbing the brakes," Lingerfelt said. "The more we can get [Gilliland] to back his corner up and just let the car to roll and be free it's easier on the brakes.

"With the brake fluid or anything, as long as you've got the air going to the calipers and rotors to keep 'em cool, your fluid is going to be fine."

Petty Enterprises' owner/driver Kyle Petty has 52 career starts at Martinsville and will lean heavily on that, he said.

"The Car of Tomorrow is different, but braking at Martinsville will never be," Petty said. "You've got less downforce with these cars [so] that will be a little bit of an issue."

Petty agreed that solving cooling issues might be the biggest thing teams can do, including his own No. 45 Dodge group.

"It will be a little bit harder on the brakes, and working the cooling out on the brakes," Petty said. "I think we are all taking an educated guess on brake ducts because of how the air is going to flow around the front of the splitter and around the front of the cars. I think we are all pretty confident that we can get the air there.

"I don't see brakes being a huge problem. It's still a 3,400-pound racecar. It is still a 110-inch wheelbase racecar. The biggest issues are going to be the downforce, how that affects braking -- and whether we have the proper cooling."

How brakes will affect the racing remains to be determined Sunday. Martin Truex Jr., who had one of the fastest cars in practice all weekend, said he was concerned about passing, even though Petty wasn't.

"If you can look past the brakes it goes back to the racing on the track," Petty said. "What about passing? I don't think passing is going to be an issue.

"Everybody talks about this car being wider. It is maybe one inch narrower than a truck and the trucks put on great races at Martinsville, great races at Bristol, great races everywhere we go. I don't think the width of the new Dodge Avenger is going to make any difference."

Truex had his doubts, as he forecast the most critical item on Sunday.

"Track position, track position, track position [because] it seems like it is really hard to pass even in practice," Truex said. "I did a terrible job of qualifying [Friday] and I got us behind -- we probably should have been in the top five, but we have a good enough car, we can race our way up there."

Again, trading on his experience, Petty was sure of another thing.

"It is still going to be the same old tough place," Petty said. "If Bristol was any indication of what Martinsville is going to be like, when you look at the qualifying speeds, everyone is running the same speeds.

"That is why it is going to be tough to pass."