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Welcome to the Cup Scene Daily for
Vol. III,No.VIXII FINAL EDITION
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Quote of the day:
"I told the guys, 'Let me know if I've got this thing.' Shortly thereafter, I heard screaming and yelling, so I figured that was good enough."
7 DAY ARCHIVE SundayMonday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday INSIDE TODAY'S ISSUE: Biffle and Childress talking again Busch racing coming to the big track at Indy Busch and Biffle mending fences Staten Island, Start Your Engines: Nascar May Be on Its Way DEI seals 5-year sponsorship deal on No. 1 car Stremme not happy at Ganassi Nemechek adds Lowes Busch race at last minute: Penalties handed out NASCAR won't shorten 600 miler Childress Almost Quit After Earnhardt Died Schrader's 49th birthday celebration will be a big deal Lucky fans, drivers make pit road scene Drivers to watch at Charlotte Time for D.W. to Get Off the Fence Cup Scene readers speak out about Talladega
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Happy Birthday: Butch Stevens, Marvin Panch Jimmie Johnson, the last of 52 drivers to make an attempt, set a track record to edge Ryan Newman for the top qualifying spot Thursday night at Lowes Motor Speedway. As it turned out, luck, not horsepower, was the determining factor.
Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon didn't have it. They wound up second and third - even though Newman's speed of 186.948 mph was faster than the old track record. ``When I saw where we were going to go out and qualify, it didn't hurt my feelings a bit,'' Johnson said. "The way I got through Turns 1 and 2, I knew the car was really hooked up," Johnson said. "I got a little loose in Turn 3 and had to pause on the gas pedal, and I was a little nervous coming off Turn 4. "I told the guys, 'Let me know if I've got this thing.' Shortly thereafter, I heard screaming and yelling, so I figured that was good enough." Because Thursday's qualifying started under the sun and ended after sunset, drivers who went out late had a distinct advantage. Johnson got to go last among 52 drivers, when the asphalt at Lowe's Motor Speedway was coolest and fastest. Newman had to go fourth after one of his crewmen drew the No. 4 pill from the hopper early in the day. ``It's funny, he was so shook up, he wanted to fight the guy he pulled the pill from,'' Newman said about his crewman. ``It's not really like him. He's a pretty laid-back guy. ``We didn't fire him,'' Newman said, joking, ``but he knew when he pulled fourth it wasn't going to be a good qualifying spot.'' Gordon drew the 14th slot and took his laps when the track was still hot and slick. He nearly matched Newman, going 186.922 mph. That put him second until Johnson knocked him off the front row. ``Had Ryan gone out last - or me - who knows what we could have run,'' Gordon said. ``It's just kind of the luck of the draw. It's how our sport works. Every week, it doesn't matter whether we're qualifying during the day or going day to night, whatever number you draw is part of the luck factor that goes into racing.'' Matt Kenseth qualified 37th, and if he wins the 600, he'll do so without the next-generation Ford engine and it's 12-horsepower boost that powered him to a $1 million victory in Saturday's Nextel All-Star Challenge, because that engine's durability is still questionable Kenseth was far off yesterday's pace, and only two Ford drivers cracked the top 20.
If Ford's new engine was key to last weekend's All-Star race and Matt Kenseth's narrow win against Newman, things may be more even this weekend . This is a horsepower track, but handling, particularly at the record-breaking speeds, will be crucial. But practice is all but impossible, Gordon said, because "practice here during the day is absolutely ridiculous for a night race." Kenseth and four other drivers had the engine - the main difference being a new cylinder head - in the all-star race. Ricky Rudd in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford is the only driver with it this week. The engine was first offered to Greg Biffle, who complained about not having one in the all-star race, and then Jeff Burton, who is having a terrible season. Team owner Jack Roush said both declined because of the risk of part failure in a long race. ``We're in a zero-defect business here,'' Roush said. ``Anybody that has problems that could be avoided is taking a big chance with the success of their program.'' Building the new engines is not as simple as switching out the cylinder heads, Roush said. One challenge is the new head takes a shorter engine block, and the company that supplied the Ford blocks went out of business last year. That business is back in operation, but it hasn't supplied many blocks yet. And the block isn't the only part affected by the change. ``There's a different cam shaft,'' Roush said. ``There's a different valve spring. There's a different valve. There's a different cylinder block dimension. There's a different connecting rod. There's a different balance on the crank shaft damper. There's a whole bunch of components that have to be tuned to this cylinder head that have to come on line together.'' Elliott Sadler, who won at Texas with the old engine in April, led the Ford camp Thursday night with a fourth- best lap of 186.619 mph. Rudd, with the new engine, did not make the field on speed and had to take a provisional. NASCAR officials found themselves on the defensive yesterday when questioned by reporters about why they are allowing some Ford teams to run the new Ford engine when there weren't enough pieces to provide engines for all Ford teams. "There are supposed to be enough parts to go around for everyone," Chevy car owner Richard Childress said, citing a long-standing NASCAR rule. The new Ford engine is becoming quite a mysterious piece, the more Ford men talk about it. How can Ford Motor Company, with its vast resources, say it doesn't have enough parts and pieces to put together more than five NASCAR engines with its new cylinder head? Car owner Robert Yates: "This is a brand-new deal. We can't use the existing block because they've ruled that out. We can't just interchange the cylinder heads. You can't just take the heads off one engine and put the new heads on, because of the deck height. And when you change the deck height, you change everything. "You need new castings, and the casting company is giving us fits. We were at the oldest foundry and they went bankrupt a year ago and we've reopened them. The new foundry is working very hard to get us blocks; they cast us 16 wrong and two right. It's a time thing. "It takes a different crankshaft, it takes a different connecting rod, it takes a different piston, it takes a different manifold, it takes different valves. So there are a lot of things that are moved, going from one engine to the other engine. We're not ready to mass produce it. Parts are available; we're just not sure about all of them. "Hopefully by Pocono (June 13) or Michigan (June 20) we'll start having some blocks and cranks we'll feel good about. "We've had a lot of merging to do this year, taking Jack's engines and our engines. The first goal was to be real happy with our 'C' engine. And at the same time Doug (Yates) was working on the (new) 'D' engine. And it takes six months to get crankshafts. "We have 160 engines (for the eight teams) so we can rotate them every four weeks. Shoot, they can't survive at that rate. We don't have the product. But now we're learning what runs good. And now we've got to order valves and springs. "We keep pushing RPM, and looking at post-race from Saturday we saw some things we had to change, and Ricky has that this week, and hopefully that will be our specification for Pocono." Jeff Burton doesn't want to take a chance on the new Ford engine and he declined the one offered to him because the last thing he needs is another miserable weekend.
He pulled his Ford to the inside of Jeremy Mayfield for the lead, but lost control and spun. That mistake dropped him to the rear of the field, and he finished 14th. "I think you take a race like that for the good and the bad," Burton said Thursday. "We had a really good car at Richmond and ran up front and performed well, then we go all the way to the back with the spin." Burton used to come to each track, particularly Lowe's Motor Speedway, as one of the favorites. He won 17 races in a five-year span, and finished a career-best third in the final Nextel Cup standings in 2000. Two of those victories came in the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's. But since winning at Phoenix in October 2001, Burton has gone 87 races without a victory. He has only eight top-five finishes in the past two seasons. "We just haven't done what we needed to do lately," Burton said. "You have to put yourself in position to take advantage of any break you get, and we just haven't done that." So far in 2004, he has only one top-10 finish, a seventh at Talladega, and he comes into Sunday night's 600 29th in the standings. He qualified 34th. What makes his descent over the past couple of seasons even more striking is the success of his teammates, Kenseth and Kurt Busch. Kenseth won the Nextel Cup title last season, using a consistent run that included a series-best 25 top-10 finishes. Busch had four victories - a total second only to Ryan Newman - and wound up one spot ahead of Burton in the standings in 11th. Even rookie Greg Biffle won a race, using fuel mileage to pull off a bit of an upset in July at Daytona. Only Burton and Mark Martin went winless with Roush. "We just didn't have what the other cars had," Burton said. "Not that it wasn't available to us, but we didn't use what they did. Hopefully, we can use that information and get our stuff better." His brother, Ward, understands the frustration. He went nearly five years between victories earlier in his career, so he appreciates how tough it is. "People don't understand how hard it is to win," Ward Burton said. "A few years ago, Jeff was finishing in the top five, the top 10 every week. I'm sure it's got to be hard on him, but I haven't noticed that he's gotten down on himself." Not yet. Jeff Burton started this season without a full-time sponsor, leading to rampant rumors that team owner Jack Roush planned to pull the No. 99 off the track. In the past couple of races, Roundup lawn and garden products has supported the team, and Burton is hopeful an announcement will be made soon about the rest of the season. Until then, he and his crew members likely will face more garage gossip about the situation. The most persistent of this talk has him joining Richard Childress Racing. "It's bad to hear that," Jeff Burton said. "People forget that this is what me and these guys do for a living. It's what they support their families with. It's hard to hear all this talk about the demise of our team. It's frustrating." Ward Burton acknowledges his younger brother probably has a tough decision to make "in the next few months." Until then, all Jeff can do is try to rid himself of a string of poor runs. "I don't believe in luck," Jeff Burton said. "Certainly, there's times in your career where you can do no wrong, and other times where you can't do anything right. "But we've got everything in place here to turn this around. We've just got to do it." Johnson is the defending champion of the 600 and goes into Sunday's race as a favorite, along with Gordon. ``This track, there's something about it,'' Johnson said. ``[Crew chief Chad Knaus] likes it; I've got the right package from Hendrick Motorsports. We've been good here.'' Newman, Jeff Gordon, Elliott Sadler and rookie Brian Vickers rounded out the top five. Matt Kenseth, who won the Nextel All-Star Challenge at Lowe's last week, ended up 37th, and points leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 10th.
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