Saving the brakes, engine vital at New Hampshire (cont'd)

"I think it's typical," he said. "That's the fundamentals of what we fight every weekend, no matter what track we go to. This track does seem to be highlighted a little bit more because you go really fast down the straightaway and you're braking really hard while turning into a corner that's flat.

"It is wide open, so you can slide up the track. You don't necessarily just go straight up and crash. There's some room to overshoot it."

Along with suspension geometry and the like, brake balance is becoming a big tuning tool among drivers and crews.

"I think it exploited the fact that you have to work on this a little bit more," Pemberton said. "They're top-heavy a little bit and the weight transfer is a little different. This is our fourth time at Loudon with this car, so we're getting it narrowed down. Brake balance is one of those things that we're playing with maybe a little more than we were a year ago."

Since NHMS is flat, with drag strips for straightaways and hairpins for turns, engines tend to take a beating. Add the need to get good fuel mileage, and Pemberton has a juggling act on his hands.

"It's a tough place on engines," he said. "You can run a lot of RPM at the end of the straightway. If you look at the record books, there's always going to be a fair amount of engine failures there. It's pretty tough on engines. They wind up pretty hard, and turn a lot of RPM. The heat, if it's a hot day, can play a big part in that. I know our Toyota engines are improving. That place there seems to wind up as a gas mileage place, and in order to get good mileage you have to lean the engine out. When you do that it creates other problems in heating and cooling and your risk factor increases."

Reutimann and Pemberton put together an eye-opening run last week at Richmond, leading a race-high 104 laps. The car they raced there was a chassis built by the team, and that too is becoming par for the course, according to Pemberton.

"It's important to do your own thing, control your own destiny," he said. "You can control your parameters and the tolerances that you need, and you can build a better racecar. All the teams that are in the Chase, they build their own stuff. That's just the way it is. Gibbs builds its own engines, Hendrick builds its own engines, Childress builds its own engines...they do the same with their cars, and that's real important for us. You have to control your own parameters yourself.

"There's an unknown. I believe you can build a better piece than you can buy, and that's why you do it. We're not doing it because it's cool or anything like that. You build your own because you think you can build something better than what you can buy. They're doing it for a reason. They'll do whatever it takes to get a better piece. If a chassis builder down the road in South Carolina can build a better chassis than what Hendrick can build, I think they'd go get one. There's not a very good chance of that, so that's why we do it."

Protecting that new piece on the tight pit road is one headache Pemberton has every time he comes north.

"Pit road there is one of the tightest on the circuit," he said. "You'll see a lot of guys backing up or having bad pit stops. Over the years, if I could change one thing that we've done up there, I'd say if I managed to get in and out of the pits without getting blocked in, I'd have had a lot more success than I've had.

"It's real tight, the components are hot, tires are hot, brakes are hot ... pit road is havoc."

Since this is the opening race of the Chase, and his team isn't in it, Pemberton will focus on different things this weekend.

"[The Chase] doesn't really change what we do, but what it does change is where we are in the points and what our objectives are for the end of the year, and you can address the last few races a little different," he said. "Everybody talks about points all year, you're in the Chase or you're out of the Chase. You're either in the 20s, which is where we are, or you're trying to hang onto the top 35. For us, it's not a top-35 thing, and we're definitely not in the Chase. So you might want to deal with things differently.

"There might be a time when we can go and try to do something that puts us at risk but might pay big dividends. You short-pit and go two laps down or you might lead the race by doing it. As the races wind down, you might be able to take more chances and not lose ground."