DEI/RCR engine to make its debut in Daytona race

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Friday's Bud Pole Qualifying session for the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway came nowhere near portraying how good the newly-born DEI / RCR engine development partnership can be.

But Richard Childress Racing driver Jeff Burton is one man who can't wait until Saturday night's Pepsi 400 -- the first event in which engines developed in conjunction by the two front-running multi-car Nextel Cup operations will be used.

RCR, DEI partner

Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Richard Childress Racing announced in May the two would combine their engine departments.

• Complete story, click here
• Max Siegel discusses the merge in Conversation

Burton will line up fifth on the grid thanks to his position in the owner standings. His RCR teammates, Daytona 500 winner Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, are set to take the green in eighth and 12th, respectively.

The two lead Dale Earnhardt Inc. drivers, Martin Truex Jr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr., start 10th and 13th, respectively. Burton, a former Pepsi 400 winner, thinks they'll all be coming to the front in a hurry.

"In race trim, I thought that we were more competitive than we were in February," Burton said of the new engine's impact. "If you have a car that can drive well, with speed, you can make more things happen."

Burton finished third in the Daytona 500, behind race winner Harvick, and thinks their prospects are improved thanks to the engine collaboration that was announced in May.

"In February, we did what we had to do to try to put ourselves in position to win," Burton said. "Now, I feel we have a little more steam [under the hood] to press the issue when we need to."

DEI's vice president for motorsports Richie Gilmore, formerly the company's head engine builder, is DEI's lead man on the collaboration with RCR and he said the two companies did what they could to get to Daytona, with a larger goal in mind.

Gilmore said the engine package for Daytona was the result of a three-week exercise, "taking people from both companies, and we did testing at both companies, on the dyno.

"We took manifolds, the intake they had; carburetors and mixed and matched them to see what ran the best. Then we put them on each other's engines to see what short block was best, cylinder head-wise -- then just put all the pieces together."

The development of restrictor plate cars and engines has become virtually a year-round exercise for the top teams. This Pepsi 400 is complicated by the fact that the "standard car" will be used for the last time; and Chevrolet teams are in the process of switching over from the current SB2 engine to the new, R07 design.

"For here at Daytona, we were just short on time as far as building a specific engine for the two companies," Gilmore said. "So what we did was take the best of both companies that we could bolt on an engine -- stuff that we had in inventory -- and that's kind of what we've got down here.

"The timeframe wasn't there from when we put the deal together, in May. To order parts and get everything together, we didn't have enough time to get it down here in July, because there's a lot of lead time on engine stuff -- 12 to 16 weeks -- and it was a lot of money [to spend] for one race.

"So we took the best of both worlds on stuff that we could put together, like carburetors and intakes and headers that we found. This was the last time we were going to run the SB2 engine [at a plate race] so we didn't want to put a lot of money into it -- but we put in a lot of effort.

"We feel like we've got a good package and all the drivers seem to be happy."

Harvick is one who's seeing the benefits.

"I think we've run very strong through the whole year and we've had a couple hiccups along the way at a couple racetracks -- but nothing crazy bad," Harvick said. "For the most part we've been really good performance-wise. Our engines keep getting better every week and I know we have a plan getting to the Chase with our engines being better and having different packages and things like that to choose from."

That, Gilmore said, is the collaboration's ultimate intent.

"The big focus is on Talladega, to have an engine that you could take out of the 8 truck [Earnhardt Jr.'s DEI car] and put it in the 29 [Harvick's RCR car]," Gilmore said. "All of the engines going to Talladega will be the same.

"We're starting on that project Monday. We've kind of laid out the package we want to run there and we've got 10 people put aside to start work on that project on Monday.

"We'd like to build 18 engines for the test [in September], then come back and try to rebuild half of them and get ready for the [UAW-Ford 500 on Oct. 7]."

Gilmore said the 10 men -- a mix of employees from each organization's engine department, would work in RCR's engine R&D department in Welcome, N.C.

"That's what we've been doing since the middle of May, putting guys in each other's shops and working together," Gilmore said. "Right now it looks good that we'll have five guys in the Chase [for the Nextel Cup].

"Our goal for the Chase is to have a common package on the R07 for the open engines, by then. Right now we have a little mix of our cylinder heads and their short blocks -- we're mixing and matching and making the best scenario that we can.

"But by the Chase, we want to all have a common engine, as we call it."