NASCAR BGN: Teams head to Nashville after a week off
Posted By Terry CallahanMotorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
April 11, 2001
After a weekend to catch their breath, the Busch Series competitors are back in action this weekend at Nashville Superspeedway. The new 1.33-mile facility plays host to the first standalone Busch Series event and the eighth race of the 2001 season. Greg Biffle, who is currently third in the point standings, talked about going to a new facility and how it parallels his early Craftsman Truck Series experiences.
THERE HASN'T BEEN A PRACTICE SESSION, TEST SESSION OR RACE YET AT NASHVILLE SUPERSPEEDWAY, SO YOU DON'T HAVE ANY NOTES OR EXPERIENCE TO DRAW FROM. DOES THAT REMIND YOU OF YOUR EARLY DAYS IN THE TRUCK SERIES? "It really does. Mark and Jeff aren't going to be there, we haven't raced there before, so we're going to be on our own to figure it out. I'm kinda excited about. It's our first time out on our own, so to speak, so it will be interesting to see how well we adapt to the race track and how well everyone else does."
YOU BASICALLY HAVE AN OPEN TEST SESSION ON THURSDAY. HAVE YOU DEVELOPED A GAME PLAN AS TO WHAT YOUR STRATEGY WILL BE BETWEEN LONG RUNS AND QUALIFYING RUNS? "We'll start out on long runs just to get used to the track, find a line around the race track and let some rubber get down. What happens is once you start working on qualifying, the track changes so much once the rubber gets down that it would not benefit us doing that."
THIS IS YOU FIRST WEEKEND NOT RACING WITH THE WINSTON CUP SERIES. WILL YOU NOTICE A DIFFERENCE? "It will be a difference, but like I said, I'm looking forward to that, being out on our own. Besides them not running with us, they have the weekend off, so I think that will allow us to get more exposure and we'll see if the Busch Series can entertain the race fans when there isn't a Cup race. The Busch Series is the feature race this weekend, and hopefully we can generate as much excitement and attention as the Winston Cup Series. Hopefully we'll get some of those Cup guys there for the race because they always seem to step up the level of competition. You sometimes run as fast as you need to win a race, but when they're there, you have to run that much faster to stay in front."
WE DON'T SEE A LOT OF CONCRETE OVALS IN RACING ANYMORE. "I'm kinda a fan of concrete. It's a win or lose situation. They either hit it right on, and the tires are great and the track is great, or they seem to have trouble, chronic problems with traction and getting the balance between traction and a good tire that will last. Overall, I think concrete is a great racing surface and you don't see as big a change in track conditions with changing weather, something as small as cloud cover."
IS THERE A TRACK YOU CAN SAY IS SIMILAR TO NASHVILLE? "To be honest, I haven't even seen the race track, not even a photo of it, so I don't really know what to expect at this point. That's the great thing about this weekend, it's a level playing field. The only thing is that other guys have more experience adapting to new places with the car versus what we do, but I think we have a relatively good idea of what's going to happen and what we need to do."
WITH NO OTHER ROUSH DRIVERS AT THE TRACK THIS WEEKEND, WHOM DO YOU TALK TO ABOUT TRACK CONDITIONS AND SETUPS? "We've talked a lot with Jeff Green and we've been fortunate enough to talk to Kevin Harvick. I'm friends with him from the Truck Series so that helps, so there's a number of guys that we can turn to for help, but likewise if we figure the track out first, I'm sure they'll come to us looking for some help."
DO YOU FEEL THAT YOU'RE STILL GOING THROUGH AN ADJUSTMENT PERIOD FROM THE TRUCK SERIES TO THE BUSCH SERIES? "Absolutely. We're finding that what worked in the trucks really doesn't work in the cars. The notes that we have from the trucks and the changes that we made are similar at some places, but like we found out at Texas, they weren't even close. At tracks like that, we're rebuilding our notes, and we've seen that we aren't really satisfied with the car until after Happy Hour. It just takes time."
IS IT HARD TO NOT RELY ON YOUR TRUCKS NOTES AND USE THEM AS A CRUTCH? "Sometimes it has been difficult. When you try some of those things and the car still doesn't turn, you're forced to think out of the box, out of the spectrum of where we think it needs to be. We're touching on new territory now, and it's different on some of the tracks that we've run on both in the trucks and cars."
AT WHAT TRACKS HAVE YOU FELT MOST COMFORTABLE THIS YEAR? "I've been OK at most of the tracks that we've been to. Testing in the off-season helped that, but we ran a lot of the mile-and-a-half tracks last year and I think that, maybe they don't necessarily fit my driving style, but I have the most time at those kinds of tracks. I know where you can get in trouble on the race track and I know what things to do and not to do."
YOU WERE DEALT YOUR FIRST DOSE OF BAD RACING LUCK AT BRISTOL, BUT YOU CAME BACK STRONG AT TEXAS. "You have to out that behind you. I learned that early in my truck career. We didn't get off to the best of starts and we went through a lot of Jack's equipment, but the one thing that I learned was to move on and learn form your mistakes. At Bristol, we made a bunch of mistakes. We were running real good there and had a bad pit stop and got caught up in a wreck. That's exactly how that happened. We're trying to avoid those problems, but having new guys on the pit crew since Daytona, each week we seem to have somebody different, it's hard to get the team to gel and make solid 15-seconds stops like the 2, 10, 17 and 57. All of those guys have been together and are pretty uniform at making those stops and nailing it, and we're not there yet. I bet if you surveyed most of those teams, they haven't had a lot of personnel changeover in the off-season. They were championship-caliber teams last year, and that experience only helps them to be stronger. In a sense, we're playing catch-up to those guys because we're a new team, but if we can beat those guys at the end of the year, I think that just speaks volumes of this Grainger team because to beat them I think we have to work twice as hard and right now we're in the thick of things."
YOU HAVEN'T STRUGGLED LIKE SOME OF YOUR WINSTON CUP COUNTERPARTS. WHY HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO ACHIEVE SUCCESS EARLY IN THE YEAR? "I think a lot of the Winston Cup shortfalls are a result of bad racing luck. There are a lot of things that are impacting the way that they are running. It's more than just changing a crew chief or changing a few things on the surface. There are a lot of things that they are dealing with that they're having to overcome right now. I don't know the answers, nobody knows the answers, if they did they could fix it. There are a lot of things involved that makes a race team run up front or not. You've got to have all of them just perfect to be able to run up front. They're struggling right now, but Mark, Matt, Jeff and Kurt are good drivers, they'll get through it, they're just having some tough luck right now."
HOW DO YOU AVOID THAT? "We're not under as strict of criticism as the other teams are from the outside. We're in our own building and Randy and I, and the whole Grainger team, are digging hard to just go our own direction and do what we need to do and what's going to win us races and points championships. Jack has been great with us. With the exception of Jeff's partial schedule, we're a one-team operation in the Busch Series and that's new at Roush. Jack's never run a full-schedule Busch team, and while we have Mark and Jeff's notes on some tracks, we're blazing a new trail in terms of running for a Busch championship. Mark and Jeff ran each of their Busch races for the win, there was no racing for second place for those guys, but that's the difference between a full-schedule deal and a partial-schedule deal. Sometimes we find ourselves running for points to stay in the championship race. It's not an all or nothing deal when you're trying to win the championship. We learned that in the trucks, and I'm sure Mark and Jeff will tell you that about their Winston Cup programs."
Text provided by Kevin Radvany
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