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Welcome to the Cup Scene Daily for
Vol. III,No.VIXII FINAL EDITION
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G.B.U. Scott 7 DAY ARCHIVE SundayMonday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday INSIDE TODAY'S ISSUE: Smith to sub for Kahne Hermie Sadler will enter Martinsville Two Papers Drop Earnhardt Photo Lawsuit Burton uninjured in auto accident Buy a t-shirt, get your name on a car NASCAR's Hunter returns to touring, weekly series Kentucky tests planned for this week Roush-Yates union is paying off Crafton tests No. 99 Busch car at Daytona What's on the schedule? Change Former teacher now in elite class Top ten heading into Martinsville Racing Blind Spots Aren’t Just in the Mirrors Cup Scene readers speak out about the new point system
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Happy Birthday: Dalton Buice, Dan Gurney, Mike Ford A driver's enthusiasm about competing at Martinsville Speedway is always tempered by the bump-and-grind nature of racing around the track's incredibly small confines.
Forty-three cars snake around the .526-mile oval - the shortest track on the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series schedule - and they inevitably run into something, be it each other, the outside retaining wall or the curbing that lines the apron of the corners. Even without any contact, 500 laps of hard acceleration followed by equally hard braking takes a toll on a driver's equipment. The 800-foot long straightaways dump drivers into tight corners banked at only 12 degrees, putting a premium on brake technology. Drivers must balance their need for speed by conserving their brakes for 263 miles. If they can't slow themselves down enough to drive through the corner, then their exit off the corner suffers, and their overall lap is drastically slower. It's a vicious cycle that's typical Martinsville. But after 55 years of NASCAR visiting the southern Virginia track, teams are quite used to it. After a break for the Easter weekend, this Sundays Advance Auto Parts 500 at Martinsville is the next stop for Nextel Cup Series competitors. And even though the 2004 season has brought a myriad of changes to the sport - a revised point system, a new title sponsor in Nextel, a new fuel sponsor in Sunoco and a new tire and aerodynamic package - racing at Martinsville remains unchanged.
Stewart won that race from the pole with a track record qualifying time of 19.855 seconds at 95.371 mph - a mark that still stands to this day. In the six races since, Stewart has scored four top-10 finishes, two of which were third-place results. Solid efforts in all, but Stewart and Co. will be looking for more when the eighth race of the season commences at Martinsville Stewart says that Martinsville and Bristol seem to have a lot in common. They're both short tracks, where good days seem to be great and bad days seem to be horrendous. "They're the kind of tracks where if you have a good qualifying run and you have a great race car, then the race is a lot of fun." said Stewart, "If you have a car in the race that's not driving well and you have a bad qualifying run and a bad pit selection and you end up fighting the car all day, then a place like Martinsville becomes a very tough track. But that's also one of the reasons why when you do win there it means so much. Plus, their grandfather clock is one of the coolest trophies around." Ricky Craven is a fan of Martinsville. "Racing at Martinsville is a throw-back to the old days. It reminds me of racing in New England. You are on the gas, you drive deep in the corner, then you are on the brakes and you set the nose to try to roll through the corner and carry as much speed as possible. You exit the corners as straight as possible so you can accelerate down the straight. You are on the gas 1000 times and on the brakes 1000 times. From my seat, it's as much fun as anything we do all year. I wish we raced at tracks like this more. I just love it!" Brett Griffin, spotter of the number 38 car of Elliott Sadler says Martinsville is just another bullet you have to dodge. "A good day at Martinsville is finishing on the lead lap because most of the time that means you'll have a shot at a top 10. Consistency is the name of the game for the first 26 races. A DNF or not finishing on the lead lap would probably be the ingredients for a bad weekend."
The good thing about Martinsville is it's a short track. Aero doesn't play a role. We won't hear anything about aero push. It's not necessarily a race track that's hard on engines because even though you turn a lot of RPM's, unlike Texas, it's not sustained RPM that gets up there and just hammers. It's another bullet that you have to dodge, like Bristol and NASCAR's largest race track, Talladega, in two weeks. You hope that everybody learned a lesson after Bristol and won't take feelings and emotions into that race track. If you do, more than likely, you're going to get them hurt, and you're going to be mad at somebody when you leave there. We have two grooves of racing at Martinsville, and it appears you can run side-by-side there. It's the second of three short tracks in the first half of the season, and everybody looks forward it because so many of the elements that we have to deal with everywhere else, like aero, go out the window for this race" A unique feature of Martinsville is the curb that lines the inside of the corners and can affect a racing line. "At times you can use it to your advantage, but most of the time it's a disadvantage to get on the curb.",says Stewart. Either way, you always have to run right up against the curb. It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. If you get around it just right you get a pretty nice view. If you go overboard, you're going to fall. The biggest thing that happens (when you hit the curb) is that it de-wedges the car. It puts a lot of cross weight from the left front to the right rear tire, and when that happens the car gets really, really loose. And when you get that loose, you typically spin out while four guys behind you pile into each other before they hit you." The other factor at Martinsville is always the equipment. Brakes are incredibly important on the short track. When the Home Depot team travels to restrictor plate venues, the #20 team's engine specialist - Roger Purcell - is usually seen pacing the pit area. But with brakes being such an issue at Martinsville, it's now time for brake specialist Jason Shapiro to pace the pits. "Yeah, it is. Every time we go to Martinsville I take five years off my life. It's difficult, but you've got to do it. It's like going to the doctor to get a shot. You know you don't want to, but you know you need to." "You try to stay off the brakes as much as possible.", says Stewart," You always hear the crew chief talking about floating the car into the corner, and what they mean by that is instead of driving it really deep into the corner and using a lot of brake pressure, the theory is to lift a little earlier and use less brake pressure. You'll end up running virtually the same lap time as you would if you drove hard into the corner. But when you've got a 500-lap race at Martinsville and you've got to use the brakes hard twice a lap, that's 1,000 times during a race where you're asking that brake system to slow down a 3,400-pound race car. If you can be easy on those brakes for the first half of the race or first three-quarters of the race, then when you really need those brakes to battle for the win at the end - you've got 'em." How does a driver conserve his brakes for 500 laps around Martinsville? "I think it's important to slow down before you get to the corner and not charge the corner. That's key to a good lap time. There are times, however, when you've got to do what the other guy in front of you is doing in order to pass him, and that's when you abuse your brakes. You end up running into the corner harder because you've got to out-brake him going down the straightaway to get next to him. But the way you conserve your brakes is by slowing down in a straight line, getting off the brake, coasting through the center of the corner and then getting back on the gas. That's going to be better on the brakes and you're generally going to have a better lap time." Ricky Craven says that brakes aren't evrything though. "Brakes are a piece of the puzzle, but they are not everything. You have to have a good handling car. You need a car what will roll in the corner so you can carry more speed in the corner. Brakes are critical at Martinsville, but the best way to save them is to have a good handling car." On the Mondays after Martinsville when Shapiro gets back at the race shop and takes the wheel off, has he ever been shocked at what the brakes look like after 500 laps? "We try to end the race with a half a brake pad left. If we ever get into an issue where we knock part of the nose off and we lose some of our cooling, there is a cushion in place. But when I open up that wheel and there's not a half a pad, I get a little scared." Elliott Sadler comes to Martinsville with the momentum of a win two weeks ago at Texas.
"Fresh off a win I will probably be like a horse coming out of the gates when I get behind the wheel for practice at Martinsville. Even though he has been preaching patience all this time my crew chief Todd Parrott told me that might not be a bad thing. (But) Martinsville is like a train wreck waiting to happen." Saturday's truck race features three-time champion and TV Darrell Waltrip. DW make three cameo appearances in the Truck Series this season. "Martinsville is not about the gas, it's about the brakes," the 57-year-old said. "Every time we go there you always have to concern yourself with brakes, and that's spelled two ways: b-r-a-k-e-s and b-r-e-a-k-s." |
