Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Such is the case this week as the Cup Series heads to Texas Motor Speedway, which crew chief Tony Gibson calls a "faster Atlanta, a faster Charlotte."

"It has a little more grip than Atlanta, and not as much as Charlotte, and it is faster," Gibson said of the 1.5-mile oval near Fort Worth. "It's a little faster than Atlanta is, but it does have two bumps. It has one exiting Turn 1 into Turn 2 and it has one into Turn 3 that is a pretty good little bump. You have to address those two bumps, especially since everybody is on bump stops and it tends to upset the car and detach the tire from the track."

Gibson, whose No. 8 Chevrolets have been driven by Mark Martin and Aric Almirola this season, said speed was a concern as well.

"The speed is also an issue," he said. "It's very, very fast, and you don't have very much room for error."

The bumps put a new twist on the handling aspect of the car, as the bump-stop setup becomes even more crucial.

"It's really difficult, because as the race pace changes ... when you're out there in practice, everyone has a lot of grip, they're out there running by themselves, they have a lot of air on the front of the car and that generates a lot of downforce," Gibson warned. "As you start the race and you're around other vehicles, it kind of takes that downforce away. The air moves around and you really don't have the same kind of atmosphere that you do in practice.

"The car has less downforce on it, which creates less load on the bump stops. Trying to figure that out between the race and practice is pretty tricky sometimes as to how much load you have on the bump stops. That's one of the things we fight every weekend."

While there is little relief from NASCAR's mandated body templates, there are some things Gibson and his crew can do to make the car generate a little more of that all-important downforce.

"You're pretty much locked in with NASCAR's cage, and the way they have the templates now, so it's very difficult to get any more downforce," Gibson said. "The biggest thing we can do is use our bump stops to create a better attitude of the car, create a doorstop wedge, front end down and rear end up, and use a four-, five- or six-inch splitter."

On a track like Texas, loose is a predominant condition. Gibson said it's because of the speed. "The cars are trying to run so fast through the corners, the tire can't handle the amount of load or the speed it's trying to be fed. Goodyear tries real hard to make tires that will withstand this heavier vehicle that has less downforce.

"Guys are still running just as fast as we were with the old car, but the tire's harder so it will last, and when you have that, the tire can't accept the speed and the loads the car is trying to feed it. We don't have the downforce we need to plant the car, which plants the tire, which gives you grip."

The speed at Texas, Atlanta and Charlotte make it tough on suspension pieces, especially, Gibson said, ball joints and A-frames.

"The ball joints are top of the line, Moog does a very good job with them, but the ball joints and lower control arms, they take the beating, take all the load. As the wheel travels, it puts that ball joint at a different angle than just static, and it tries to tear it out of its socket.

"If you're coil-bind or have a bump stop, all that energy is sent through the lower control arm, so that thing is trying to bend and break all the time you're running."

Gibson said beefed-up control arms and new suspension pieces solve some of that problem, but the loads are immense.

"We'll see wheel loads up to 3,500 pounds on the right front wheel, so it's amazing that our parts hold up as well as they do," Gibson said. By the way, 3,500 pounds is 100 more pounds than the total weight of the racecar.

As always, track position is the key element of strategy for Gibson.

"Track position is huge," Gibson said. "These cars are so equal now that after about 10 laps, everybody is running the same speed. If you have a car that's a tick or two faster on new tires, you need to do your passing within the first 10 laps or so, that pretty much sets the stage for the rest of that run."

Gibson said Jimmie Johnson's call to take four tires at the end of the race at Atlanta was huge. "You were so loose after about 10 laps and the pace slowed down so much ... we would run 30.60s on stickers, but after about 10 laps we were in the 34-second bracket. When he bolted those stickers on, it was just a matter of time. They were sitting ducks."

Fuel mileage is also a big factor at Texas.

"It'll come down to fuel mileage unless you get a late caution," Gibson predicted. "If a guy's running 15th, he's going to take two or maybe no tires and try to come out first or second and try to roll the dice that he can hold them off for 10 laps, and the worst he can finish is back where he was."