Drafting speeds difficult to determine who's really fast

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- All drivers know the importance of the draft on a superspeedway; find a partner and don't get out of line.

Several drivers this week during Preseason Thunder test sessions at Daytona International Speedway formed drafting packs to gage accurate speeds and see how the new chassis will handle on the, said to be, rough and slightly bumpy track.

It's hard to tell what race conditions will be like until February when all 43 cars roll out, but drivers are getting somewhat of an indication.

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Ryan Newman, who put down the fastest lap in Tuesday's draft session with a speed of 188.013 mph, said conditions will be typical.

"I think the cars are sticking a lot better than I thought they would," he said Wednesday before the morning session. "Typically here, you deal with getting tight through a run. You have to start way loose, you get tight and whoever can handle the first part of the run is usually good at the end of the run."

But like always, handling is still a concern for Newman and many others.

"The bumpy part of it is more of a factor of the car than the actual racetrack," he said. "I don't know when the last time it was paved, but I don't think it got way rougher this past six months than it ever has."

Denny Hamlin of Joe Gibbs Racing said the track seemed bumpier.

"I was talking to Kyle [Busch, his teammate] and we both think that handling will be even a bigger premium than it was last year," Hamlin said. "I like handling races. Talladega turns out to be anybody's race, but here it seems to get strung out and is a lot better race for us drivers."

In the draft, Hamlin's fastest lap posted was 185.789 mph., whereas in single-car runs on Monday Hamlin was slower at 183.542 mph.

For Dale Earnhardt Jr. who led the speed chart in single-car runs at 185.820 mph, he too gained speed in the draft with 187.075 mph but so did other top performing drivers. Earnhardt fell to 10th position on the speed chart.

Soon-to-be retired driver Dale Jarrett said drafting times are easy to manipulate.

"You can make those times look like whatever you want depending on where you want to get," he said. "If you want to get out of line and fall back about eight or ten car lengths and you have somebody to push you up, then you can make a big time out of that. But if you just want to get yourself in the middle of that pack and see what your car is going to do there then you're not going to see that big number or that good number to put you toward the top of the board."

And near the top of the board Jarrett has been throughout the sessions. On Monday, he was first- and fourth-quickest in single-car runs. On Tuesday, he ended draft practice 13th-quickest with a speed of 186.617 mph.

"We were trying a number of things as far as race setups go and just trying to get the car to where I felt like I could keep it wide open for a lot of laps," Jarrett said. "That's what wins them."

Draft or no draft, Jarrett feels the man with the best car, not the driver, will win in the end at the Daytona 500 come February.

"The three that I won -- that is what won the race," said Jarrett, who owns Daytona 500 trophies from 1993, 1996 and 2000. "I'm pretty sure that if you talked to every other driver that's won this race they would tell you the same thing."