So some folks are tired of seeing Hendrick Motorsports cars win all the Nextel Cup races and would like to see NASCAR's top series shaken up a bit?

Well, the truth of the matter is that Hendrick has been shaking things up all along. And that is one of the secrets to the organization's dominance of the Cup Series thus far in 2007. Hendrick was one of the first NASCAR operations to invest large amounts of time and money in its own on-site seven-post shaker rig -- the latest hot technological toy that engineers, car owners and drivers alike are now crediting with providing many of the keys that lead to consistent success on all types of tracks.

Hendrick's cars have won nine of the first 12 Nextel Cup races. Prior to one of those triumphs earlier this season, driver Jeff Gordon made the comment that all the work on the seven-post shaker back at the shop was really starting to pay off. Then he talked about how it took the Hendrick organization more than a year to figure out how to translate the data they were receiving from the machine, and then even more time after that to figure out how to apply that data to various on-track adjustments at different racing venues.

The bottom line: the Hendrick guys are getting useful information from a testing simulation device that many other teams either haven't figured out yet or don't even have in their shops, with little or no prospect of getting one anytime soon.

"They've become more important than I think my engineering department thought they would, quite honestly," said car owner Ray Evernham, who does not have a seven-post rig installed at Evernham Motorsports. "At first you look at it and you think, ah, it's no big deal. But the people that are running fast have found something in them.

"Childress was the first one to have one. Richard put one in years ago. He got going on it, and then Hendrick. Ginn [Racing] just put one in. ... That machine can be a million and a half to two million dollars, so it's a tough thing for a lot of teams just to go and put one in. And even then, they say it takes a year to get it up and going."

So what is a seven-post shaker rig exactly? (Continued)