CONCORD, N.C. -- Coca-Cola 600 is NASCAR's longest race, and with the new car this year, it stands up to be the longest night of a crew chief's life.

At least that's the feeling Steve Letarte has heading into Sunday's 400-lap affair at Lowe's Motor Speedway. It's all about track position, and that's something his driver, Jeff Gordon, didn't have much of during last week's NASCAR Sprint All-Star Challenge.

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We're going to put a premium on qualifying and a premium on making sure our stuff is competitive during the day and get up into that lead lap, stay in that lead lap in that top 10 or 15 and work on it when the sun goes down.

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STEVE LETARTE

"We always preach track position, and Saturday night we saw more evidence than ever, with no tires winning the All-Star race," Letarte said. "They got spread out and [Greg] Biffle, in my opinion, had more than enough laps to attempt to pass [eventual winner Kasey Kahne]. It wasn't like we had a broken-up last segment; it was a full 25-lap run, and if tires were ever going to help I would have thought that would have been the segment they would have helped in."

The secret to a successful 600, Letarte said, is being in the right place at the right time.

"I think the key to winning the 600 is going to be having an average-handling car during the day so you have a great-handling car at night, and making sure you have the track position when you need it the most."

Finding the sweet spot in the new car has been a struggle for most of the teams, and the DuPont bunch is no exception.

"I haven't found it yet this year," Letarte said with a laugh. "We were good at Daytona and California, average at Vegas and that's about it. It's been a struggle for us to find a good handling car for Jeff. It's a struggle for everyone. Your notebook is not very big, you don't have a lot of notes to fall back on, you don't have a lot of ideas.

"The worst thing you can do is run well in the old car, because none of that seems to work in the new car. We just need to keep going week in and week out and gather data. It's frustrating, but at the same time, it's important to write down everything that doesn't work so you don't make the same mistake twice."

While it isn't likely to happen on Sunday, the All-Star Challenge was run caution-free, and Letarte said that needs to be factored into the set-up for this weekend's race.

"That tells me you need to start really close," Letarte said. "Normally, you would give up a little at the start of the 600 and say, 'well, I'm going to be better when the sun goes down,' but I'd be a little afraid to start that way.

"If the 600 starts out the way the All-Star did, with no cautions ... you get a young kid like Kyle Busch out front, leading the way he was in the All-Star race, you're going to be laps down quickly. That's one of those races, you can be 150 laps in and it's not halfway over, and if it's been 150 laps of green-flag racing, we learned at Richmond that if you start in the back (43rd), those leaders come up on you in a hurry. (Continued)