Take a lap around the “Tricky Triangle” with HScott Motorsports driver
The old saying is be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
As teams and as drivers, when you have a smooth race track, you can kind of set your car up for optimum (performance). Your tolerances are different. You’re able to run your car a little bit stiffer, a little bit lower and do all the things that — on paper — show that the car will go faster.
Unfortunately, faster doesn’t always equate to passing so I think Turn 2 is going to be a little bit of a challenge in the race (Windows 10 400, Sunday, 1:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM).
Typically in the past, (Turns) 1 and 3 have been the passing zones, and (Turn) 2 has been ‘Who can be the bravest?’ I think we’re going to go back to that. We’ve had great races up here both ways.
I’m not going to complain. It definitely makes it very unique getting through the Tunnel Turn right now because it’s smooth enough now that you’re kind of at the edge of grip of can you make the corner at the speed you’re trying to carry. Whereas with the bumps, you at least knew that you had to slow down for the bumps so that’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out in the race.
Consistent conditions from June to August
Typically when we come back here, it’s a little bit hotter during the day. The track has had all summer of the sun beating down on it so it’s typically a little bit slicker when we come back here.
That’s kind of the one thing that’s very unique about this race track. It doesn’t seem to change a lot. It seems to say pretty consistent. Other than the bumps in the Tunnel Turn, we really hadn’t had anything to talk about.
Three turns race like six
Obviously it’s only three corners, but I think it’s six. I turn in and turn off so I always call them extra corners.
On the start and restarts, you’re coming through Turn 1 six-wide pretty easily. Then you get to the turn and there’s really only about two lanes that I would say are ideal.
Off of Turn 1, you can kind of fan out again, and then when you get down to the Tunnel Turn, you run right down on the yellow line on the apron as the ideal line so you need to go from three or four-wide to one lane.
Then when you get to Turn 3, it’s not uncommon to be two or three-wide. Coming off of Turn 3, the speeds are pretty incredible. Depending on what transmission ratios you have, you’re shifting a couple times a lap. You’re either shifting in all three corners or just 1 and 3 so you have to be kind of careful who you’re racing against and what transmissions they’ve got.
2.5-mile short track?
You must make sure that you save your brakes all the way until the end of the race. You can over-cook the brakes here pretty easily. You run a smaller brake package because it is a big race track, but at the same time, you’re almost using it more than you are at a short track.
Indy-Pocono package
When you look down the front straightaway here, it seems like forever and what’s weird to me though versus Indy is the fact that Turn 1 is so wide. If Turn 1 would have been what Turn 2 is, you could have said, ‘Yeah, it’s just like Indy.’ But a lot of the things that we worked on setup-wise — not necessarily last week with the different rules package — but a lot of the things that we work on setup-wise with Indy equate to Pocono and vice versa. Anything you learn at Pocono, you can kind of use at Indy, which makes it nice.