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NASCAR WCUP: Pepsi Southern 500 Race Preview, Driver Notes and Quotes

29 August 2000

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

This week's stop on the NASCAR Winston Cup Series is the Pepsi Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, recognized as one of the toughest tracks on the circuit. Whether it's the abrasive track surface that wears out tires after only a few laps or the egg-shaped oval itself, drivers and crews will have their hands full for the annual Labor Day weekend event. Rusty Wallace, along with some other Ford crew chiefs, talked about the difficulties of preparing for Darlington and the variable of a new Goodyear tire.

RUSTY WALLACE --2-- Miller Lite Taurus -- YOU'VE NEVER WON AT DARLINGTON BUT YOU'RE ON SUCH A HOT STREAK YOU MUST FEEL GOOD ABOUT PUTTING THAT ONE BEHIND YOU. "Yeah, that's a good work -- putting that one behind me -- because they've got a new tire and everybody tells me the thing is real tough to get a hold of the race track. The setups are gonna be completely different. I didn't test there. So, we're gonna go with a calculated guess. We're just gonna say, 'OK, this is what our qualifying setup was last time. These were my comments after qualifying.' Then we might just go around the whole car and maybe soften everything up a little bit or change some things, but I know I'm going with a real rocket ship motor and I've got a great car that I'm taking. Hopefully, the motor and the car might cover some of the ill-handling I'll probably encounter at Darlington in qualifying. I just hope to get qualified good. I've gotta tell you, there have been a lot of guys testing and I'm not expecting to go there and sit on the pole because it's gonna be such a hard job. The track is so rough that it tears up tires in about three laps so it's a really tough deal. I heard some guys were down there testing. I think the Roush guys, each team went through about 17 sets of tires testing and it was just tearing tires all to crap, so it's a tough deal."

FRANK STODDARD, Crew Chief --99-- Exide Batteries Taurus -- DOES THIS TRACK POSE A CHALLENGE THAT OTHERS DON'T? "It's difficult for everybody for two or three reasons. One thing is the tires fall off as quick as they do and because of that you get guys short-stopping and all of a sudden you've got guys that are out there running two and three seconds faster a lap than what the other guys are running. That promotes accidents because of people misjudging other cars and so forth, so you've gotta be real careful about that. If you're out there on real fresh tires and somebody else is on real old tires, you've gotta be really careful trying to drive up through the traffic and that's tough to do because you also want to make up a lot of time out there. So that's an element for the driver -- there has to be a lot of awareness out there. For the crews it's just a real difficult day on trying to get the car to last for a long run to where you don't have to come in for tires as early as other guys. That's the key is just getting the car to run for 65-70 laps and maintain just as best as you can."

DO YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS FOR DARLINGTON THAT YOU DON'T FOR OTHER TRACKS? "No, not really. It's just like at Bristol, if you get your car to handle good and you fall off less than the other guy, then your car was probably handling better than his. Darlington is the same way it just that it's 10 times worse than anywhere else we go. If you're running good for a 10-lap run, then whatever you fall off after that is just gonna off even worse at 20 and even worse at 30. But the bottom line is that the guys who get their cars to work no matter whether it's a 10-lap run or a 40-lap run, they're gonna be the ones who are generally good on a 50-lap run."

WHEN YOU TESTED AT DARLINGTON LAST WEEK WERE YOU ABLE TO GET A FEEL FOR THIS NEW TIRE? "I don't know exactly what Goodyear has done to the tire, but they're trying to make it last a little bit longer. I didn't see that the times were any better than what they've ever been down there. We were slower in general. Either the race track was slower or the tire was slower or a combination of the two, but it's real hard to tell. The wear might have been a little bit better, probably not but it might have been. The speeds, though, as far as the fall off goes it's still the same old Darlington."

DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE AN ADVANTAGE FOR QUALIFYING? "I don't know. We worked on qualifying a little bit. It certainly helps, but we don't have an edge by any means. There will be guys who will go down there and right off the truck they'll run pretty good on their first lap. If you're way out to lunch, you do have an edge in going down there and testing obviously, but on the same token it's a tough place to test because it's real hard to learn a lot. You've really got to pay attention. You've got to go through a lot of sets of tires and when Goodyear is able to only give you three sets that's kind of hard to do too."

JIMMY FENNIG, Crew Chief --6-- Valvoline/Cummins Taurus -- DOES THIS TRACK CAUSE A LOT OF HEADACHES AS FAR AS CAR SETUP GOES? "Yeah, it causes headaches. That and Goodyear coming with a different tire too, that amplifies things but whatever the race track is you should be able to work it out. Even though the race track is a pain, you've just gotta keep trying different combinations and see if you can get both ends of the track working."

IS THIS TRACK MORE OF A CHALLENGE BECAUSE THE TIRES FALL OFF SO FAST? "Yeah, I mean whoever stays on the tires the longest is gonna be great but it is challenging. You want to try and stay on those tires, but also still have fast times."

DO YOU DO ANY DIFFERENT THINGS AS FAR AS SETUP GOES THERE BECAUSE YOU SLIDE AROUND MORE? "Yeah, you try to take care of the tires as best you can and still run fast. Some of that is the driver. He can take care of them if we're fast enough. We look at different shocks to comfort the tire too at that track versus some place where it isn't hard on tires like Indy. The track at Indy is really smooth and not that abrasive, so you do anything to try and save that tire as long as you can."

YOU TESTED AT DARLINGTON LAST WEEK. DID YOU GET TO TRY THIS NEW TIRE? "We set up on the old tire pretty much because we only had a couple sets of the new ones and made some runs with it. We worked with it a little bit and made some changes to our car that we felt was better."

DO YOU FEEL THIS GIVES YOU AN ADVANTAGE HAVING RUN A FEW LAPS ON THIS NEW TIRE? "There were some other guys testing on the new tire like Jeff Burton. Mark's got such good feel with a car and a tire that he can adjust right away with them. We were working on some different stuff and weren't really looking at the tire at that time, but Goodyear's got a tire that looks like it's gonna last a little bit longer. If we work on something to comfort it more, maybe we'll be all right."

MIKE BEAM, Crew Chief --21-- Citgo Taurus -- WHAT'S THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF FROM A CAR STANDPOINT WHEN YOU GO TO DARLINGTON? "The first thing you think of is that the track at Darlington doesn't have any grip, so it's a real 'shock' race track. That's what we work on a lot, but you have to run fast for 30 or 40 laps. Like I always say, you blow the tires off of it. You try to get away from people, but even people that are good on long runs there is no such thing there because you're done. You try to get your driver mentally prepared because it is a rhythm race track. You can't go too hard, but you have to go hard enough so it's more of a rhythm race track. It's like Bill (Elliott) always told me, it's a controlled slide. So whoever has their slide under control best is usually the car that runs fairly well there. We run stuff there that you really don't run at a lot of other places. The car still has to roll through the center of the corner good, but it can't be too free off. Since the corners are so different, if you get through three and four pretty good, you might be a little bit free off of two. It's a tough place, but it's a driver's race track. They've got to be mentally prepared and it's like I tell Elliott, you've got to be real patient there. You just have to take your time and I think that's why (David) Pearson was so good and (Jeff) Burton is so good and Bill was so good there. Saturday is a hard happy hour, it's probably the hardest one of all the places we go because in the morning it's kind of cool and you're on a set of tires that don't have many laps on them. Guys who have qualified, they're pumped up because they're in the top 25 and they go out there and run really well because the track temperature is way down. Then after they have the Busch race and the sun comes out and the track temperature is 120 degrees, they'll go out and run and say, 'Oh my God, what did you do to this car?' I always dread happy hour at Darlington because it's a situation where you just work and work and work. You're car has gotta hooked up and in my book it's kind of like Wilkesboro was -- it's worn out and stuff. I love the place, I love going there like everybody else because it's a challenge, but I'll say on Saturday evening when happy hour is over you're glad it's over."

IS PART OF DARLINGTON'S CHARM THE FACT THE PAVEMENT IS WORN OR SHOULD IT BE REPAVED? "When they pave it it's real fast and it's got a lot of grip and it's pretty good racing from the standpoint that it's a lot easier as far as the setup but. I wish they'd pave it every year myself, but they don't. I think it would be better racing if the track was paved, but it's just like Rockingham where you accept it. All during the week you think up different situations of what you need to do and the way things are going right now it the soft spring-big bar combinations, so it's definitely a challenge."

DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE NEW TIRE THAT WILL BE THERE? "I've heard about the tire, but we didn't test there because we're planning on going to Charlotte. We always seem to qualify well with Elliott there, so we had high hopes and then we found out about the new tire. The first of the week we've gotta really have a jam session and put our heads together to see what it's gonna take."

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT HAVING A NEW TIRE? "When I worked with Bill we tested tires there quite a bit for Goodyear. The tire they had there, I thought, was pretty decent. We could run and, yeah, they did drop off but everyone was in the same boat. The new tire here, you know the right side is pretty hard and you've just gotta try to get a lot of grip. I liked the tire they had, but Goodyear stays on top of the game so much that they're just trying to make it better. If it wasn't gonna be any better, they sure wouldn't change it. There's a reason for it, so we've just gotta go down there and adapt to it. The bad thing about it is you get three sets of tires before you qualify and, usually, off the truck you can tell if you're gonna be pretty good because you don't get a second chance until you run your second set of tires. With practice in the morning there, you really have to wait for the race track to come around and get some temperature in it before you can run that second set. The drivers are gonna have a hard time and the crews are gonna have a hard time, so I'm really not looking forward to it right now."

Text provided by Ford Motorsports

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