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The second day of Winston Cup
testing on The 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway was held
in hot and hazy conditions. Twenty-seven car/driver
combinations tested today, including 17 drivers. Most teams
tested two cars each.
A number of GM Racing engineers were on hand to assist the
GM teams, ranging in expertise from chassis, aerodynamics,
shocks, computer simulation and strategy.
MIKE SKINNER, NO. 4 KODAK FILMS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO
(quickest on Tuesday, 11th today, 50.5278/178.120): HOW IS
THE TESTING GOING? "Pretty good. We could always be better.
Our Kodak Max car is running pretty good. We'd like to stay
focused. I love Indy. I can't wait to come back here. I want
to see if we can get a Chevrolet in victory lane." ON BEING
QUICK YESTERDAY: "Well, I don't know how many people were
making qualifying runs. I think we were decent. The engines
that we have in the cars right now both have races on them,
so I know we're going to be coming back with more engines.
The 26 car (Todd Bodine) ran awfully fast today. We can't
run nowhere near that fast, but I think we can run a little
faster than we ran." ON THE GM ENGINEERS HERE HELPING YOU.
IS THAT AN ADVANTAGE? "Heck, yes. I'm telling you. It's
really been awesome. Had some good input; they've been very,
very supportive. That says a lot for GM and the Monte Carlo
brand. It says a lot for the whole deal because we've
struggled a little bit, and they're over here helping one of
their teams that are struggling. That says a lot for them. I
really appreciate that." ON HAVING A BETTER REST OF THE
SEASON: "I'm sure hoping so. We ran good at Sears Point, ran
awfully good at Daytona, got caught up in somebody else's
mistake and hopefully we can just start sneaking our way
back into being competitive. This race team hasn't been
competitive in a while, I'd love to think that I've made a
little bit of a difference for them. But, it takes it all
nowadays. It's tough. We've had a lot of support out of
Chevrolet and we just really, really appreciate every bit of
help we get. We need to get these cars in the wind tunnel
and get this aero stuff figured out. We're really struggling
with some of that stuff. It takes it all to run in Winston
Cup." DOES WHAT YOU LEARN HERE HELP YOU IN CHICAGO: "I think
so. We'll see."
ROBBY GORDON, NO. 31 CINGULAR WIRELESS CHEVROLET MONTE
CARLO: PRODUCTIVE DAY (sixth fastest today,
50.4085/178.541)? "What we really did with the Richard
Childress Racing Cingular Wireless Chevy Monte Carlo today
was work on a lot of race setup. We went back and forth on
setup; played with some body stuff in race configuration. We
probably worked about two and a half hours on a qualifying
(setup). We're trying to understand where we're at, gather
some good data, and hopefully Kevin (Harvick) and Jeff
(Green) will come back next week and take off from where
we're at, and hopefully expand on that and go further." ON
INTERACTION WITH GM ENGINEERS: "They have been with us and
involved. We have been sharing data with them, what we've
been doing. Hopefully they can go back and spend some time
with their tools to make our cars faster. We worked mostly
on chassis and body today."
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 8 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO:
PRODUCTIVE DAY (19th fastest today, 51.1885/175.821)? "Right
there at the end. We were kind of floundering for three
quarters of the day. Right at the end we found a few things
that helped the car, but we always run real good here,
qualify good and race good. We always test good too." CRAZY
WEATHER CONDITIONS: "That was good. It's good to get
combinations, to kind of know... To be able to know what the
weather does to the track, to know more about that helps
me." DOES TESTING HERE HELP YOU GOING TO CHICAGO? "We tested
here. We brought what we learned in Chicago here. We'll race
in Chicago, maybe we'll learn something to bring that here."
STEVE PARK, NO. 1 PENNZOIL CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO (fifth
fastest, 50.2412/179.136): "More laps. Today was definitely
better than yesterday. I think we learned what we came to
learn. The Pennzoil Chevrolet, I think we ended up fifth
fastest. That's pretty good right now. We have a little bit
left so we want to come back with what we know is going to
work, and we learned a lot of that today." WHAT DID YOU FIND
TODAY? "Yesterday we just did race trim stuff, today we kind
of taped up and did some qualifying runs. The difference
between the race runs and the qualifying runs is the added
speed." THIS TRACK CHANGES A LOT. WAS IT HARD TO KEEP UP?
"Not really 'cause there's a weather station plus all the Pi
system stuff, so we try to keep up, so if we make a gain on
the race track we want to make sure it's not because of wind
or weather; we want to make sure it's what we did to the
race car. So that's what we did today." INTERACT WITH GM
ENGINEERS? "Yeah, actually, we do. We have a pretty good
relationship with them, and that's helped us quite a bit
from an engineering standpoint. Anytime we come here to
test, that definitely helps. Actually, Dave Charpentier
(Manager of Engineering for DEI) went to ARC this morning
with one of the engineers to look at some modeling, wind
tunnel modeling and stuff. So, development not only here,
continues on away from the race track too. It's a lot of
help." (Note: Auto Research Center in Indianapolis is
developing a scale model for aero testing in their 40
percent wind tunnel.)
BOBBY HAMILTON, NO. 55 SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC CHEVROLET MONTE
CARLO: DESPITE THE VARIABLE WEATHER CONDITIONS, DID YOU HAVE
A GOOD TEST (seventh fastest today, 50.4218/178.494)? "I
think so. Most everybody brings two cars here to choose what
car they want, and they will take all the data off the
computer and apply it. Weıre real happy with our test. The
track was in real good shape. It was real consistent for a
change. I think that might have something to do with the
grinding."
TERRY LABONTE, NO. 5 KELLOGGıS CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO: DID
YOU GET ANYTHING ACCOMPLISHED TESTING TODAY (12th fastest
today, 50.5819/177.929)? "Yeah, I think so. We really got to
try a lot of different things that weıve been wanting to try
and really havenıt had the opportunity to try. When you go
to a race, you only have two hours of practice and then you
have to qualify so you canıt try a lot of the things that
you maybe got in the back of your mind to try. So we tried a
lot of different stuff today. I think weıre pretty close
with one car and the other car we never really tried to run
fast with it. We just had some race shocks on it and ran
some trying to get some comparisons on that. I thought the
test went pretty good. HOW SPECIAL IS THE INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR
SPEEDWAY TO YOU? "I know when I come in, anyway, I look at
the facility. We donıt go to a nicer place than this
anywhere that we race. We go to some new racetracks and this
is the oldest racetrack there is. The way they keep it up,
keep the grounds and everything and the track is always in
perfect condition. These guys are always a step ahead of
everybody. They got the soft walls up and stuff and, to me,
itıs really neat for us to come up here and race. The Indy
500, to me, is the biggest race in the world. Itıs pretty
neat for us to be able to race our stock cars at Indy. I
think probably 90 percent of the Winston Cup guys at some
point dreamed about running the Indy 500. Well, maybe we
havenıt run the Indy 500, but at least we can run at their
racetrack."
--GM--
The author can be contacted nascar@autoracing1.com
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