Wrecks during LVMS test leaves teams scrambling (cont'd)

"Mark said he was driving around the corner and trying to stay away from the flat bed," Martin's crew chief, Tony Gibson said. "The sun was in his eyes and he never saw the pole. He called me on the radio and said 'I just wrecked.'

"I couldn't believe it, because we had just seen Mark come off the racetrack. I'll tell you this -- he was devastated for the rest of the day."

DEI originally planned to bring replacement cars west, but DEI's chief of engineering, Dave Charpentier, said that plan was nixed in consideration of three days of travel time to get it done and what the teams could accomplish with the cars they had.

But if California's test is anything like Vegas' it will magnify the concerns raised about the new car's ability to be returned to service when it's damaged.

RCR driver Clint Bowyer's crew chief Gil Martin smiled as he looked at one of his No. 07 Chevrolet Impalas that was decidedly scruffy looking on the right side.

"That thing looks like it's been in a demolition derby," Martin said, laughing. "One of those wind gusts Monday just caught [Bowyer] out, going down the backstretch and put him in the wall. Luckily he didn't hit very hard."

If he had, Martin said the outcome would have been dire.

"The car that Jeff [Burton] crashed is junk -- it'll be easier to replace it than it would be to put it back together," Martin said. "Anyone who thinks these cars will be able to take a beating better than the [standard cars] is kidding themselves.

"With the [chassis] recertification process and the tolerances we have to meet, it's easier and cheaper to just build a new one than to go to the effort of repairing one."

Burton was relieved that the better of his two test cars was spared, but he admitted he was splitting hairs.

"The other car is a better car," Burton said. "There's nothing wrong -- well, there was nothing wrong with this [wrecked] car -- but we're behind with having cars ready because we've been doing so much development work that we don't have a lot of stuff in production.

"So we can't afford to be wrecking racecars."

That was the feeling at Michael Waltrip Racing when, with less than half an hour remaining in the test, a suspension part failed and propelled the team's owner/driver into the wall.

"It had a part failure, a lower A-frame failed," MWR competition director Bobby Kennedy said. "It's happened quite a few times -- it happened to Bobby Labonte last year and Dave Blaney had that same A-frame problem in qualifying at Atlanta -- so it's not uncommon, but it's certainly something we've got to look at because it's an in-house part."

Kennedy said pairs of Camrys for David Reutimann [No. 00] and Dale Jarrett [No. 44] would go to California, along with Waltrip's single remaining No. 55 Toyota. The No. 32 MWR Toyota that Michael McDowell tested at Las Vegas was not planned to be run at California.

McDowell is scheduled to test the No. 44 on Friday at California, when Jarrett has another commitment.

"We were geared-up, in case we had a problem [Monday] to have another car ready for California," Kennedy said. "But then it happened today and there's not enough time to do that."