Last week I learned an important lesson about tires. I went to the Mini dealership for my regular service appointment. I expected to get my oil changed and a car wash and be out of there in an hour. However, it got ugly in a hurry. The service chick came over to me and said, "We got your oil changed and the rest of your car serviced, but you have a problem with your tires. There is a chunk of your right front tire wrapped around your axle, and it will be $800 to replace the front tires." Whoah...I asked to have a look at it, and sure enough, a 1 inch wide slice of my RF tire had delaminated and wrapped itself around the axle like ribbon on a Christmas present. Unfortunately, the car was really unsafe to drive and I had to suck it up and get some new tires. I drive 30+ miles to work each day on the highway, and you cannot take chances when you drive a small car.
Speaking of tires, it looks like the Indianapolis tire issues have finally been resolved. For those of you who are not Jayski junkies, NASCAR has had about 4-5 tire tests at Indy in the last 3 months to sort out the tire debaucle of last year. The first 2 tests were a disaster, and the tires were only living for about 10 laps like last year. However, after the Indy 500 was run, they brought 8 or 9 cars out there and some new tire compounds. Normally there are only 4 cars at a tire test, but they wanted to lay down a lot of rubber and see how much less the wear was with track conditions more representative of the race weekend. That was two weeks ago, and an engineer friend of mine said that his car was good for atleast 30 lap on a set of tires. A fuel run is about that long, so they essentially had the issue resolved after that test. However, a whole new fleet of cars went up there on Monday and did all again. The early reports that I have been hearing from that test suggest that the tires will be just fine and the race will not be the joke that it was last year. We shall see.
If you are a Robby Gordon fan, the season starts this week. Optimism springs eternal for the fans and team alike when the circuit visits the road courses, and why not. You have a shot at the pole, you are high up the practice speed charts, Lindsay Czarniak is hanging out in your pit all weekend, things are good. Until you realize that Sonoma is a fuel mileage race. In 2007 RG had the pace to win and led 50+ laps. However, the cautions never came, and some cars could run 15 more laps on fuel than RG, and he got smoked. Then last year they made an ass out of themselves by running out of fuel in the first half of the race, and finished two laps down. In fact, RG does not even have a top 10 at Sonoma in the last bunch of years. There is no way the 7 will win a fuel mileage race at a road course. The only course of action is to try to dominate the pace of the race, and hope the pit strategy works out. At the very least, don't come without being remarkable.
Predictions for this week. I will go for a maiden victory for the 47 followed cloesly by the 14 and the 18. Marcos ran so good last year that I think he will be unstoppable with a better peice under him. I will pick the 7 for a 5th. It is hard to be compete for wins, when you don't compete for wins. I just think the pressure will breed a mistake from either the driver or the crew, and victory will elude them.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Hail Caesar
Before diving into the Cup talk this week I have to tell you about an excellent culinary adventure I had the other day. For the first time in my life, I made my own salad dressing and it came out awesome. I made a fresh Caesar dressing. MMM..mmmm.The fresh ground garlic just gave it a sublime quality that is unmatchable by the packaged stuff. It was so easy and I would recommend it to anyone. I'm not sure why I got motivated to do it, but it was a fantastic experiment.
I digress. Dover proved to be an excellent race. It is great when there are fast cars that are all on different tire and fuel strategies. Tony's resistence was admirable but was always doomed to failure due to the amazing pace of the 48. The Hendrick cars (the Stewart/Haas cars included) are so dominant just at the moment, you just can't bet against them. I know there has been a lot of critiscism of Dale Jr. recently, but he will have his day again. It is amazing that the other 5 cars are in Chase positions. Kudos to them.
I normally rant and rave that Pocono is a boring race, but I am very curious to see how this one plays out. This is the first week of the double file restart rule, and that will throw a significant enough monkey wrench into mix to make it interesting. I have read a decent amount about how this rule works, and I still cannot wrap my head around how the lap down cars play into it. The way I understand it is that they will let lap down cars get back on the lead lap so long as they don't pit under caution. If that is the case, it will be interesting to see under what circumstances teams will gamble and stay out on old tires just to get their lap back. It should make for a bigger speed differential between the cars, and will probably lead to more wrecks. Not to mention the better racing at the front of the field. This rule pretty much gives Kyle a liscensce to dominate even more races.
As far as setups go, Pocono is pretty extreme. You need a ton of motor to get down the long straights and have a chance of running people down. However, like at any track on the circuit, corner exit speed (especially off of turn 3) needs to be high to get a good lap time. So you almost need to run a short track suspension setup to get through the corners, but you also need to keep the attitude of the car low on the straights, so you don't kill your straightaway speed. So this may require shocks with a lot of damping (like you would run at Charlotte) combined with a spring package that would run at Phoenix.
Predictions for this week. I am going to go for a Kasey Kahne win. The new Evernham engine seems like it is pretty stout, and I know they have a hot shit new low center of gravity car, so I think he will be a force. I will look to the 2 car to have a top 5 and continue their excellent season. As far as the 7 goes, this is the weekend that makes all of the team members cringe. RG is running the Baja and he will have to start dead last with zero miles in the car before the green flag. Luckily it is hard to go a lap down at Pocono, so it might not be as bad as it would be at other tracks. I will go for a hard fought 30th
I digress. Dover proved to be an excellent race. It is great when there are fast cars that are all on different tire and fuel strategies. Tony's resistence was admirable but was always doomed to failure due to the amazing pace of the 48. The Hendrick cars (the Stewart/Haas cars included) are so dominant just at the moment, you just can't bet against them. I know there has been a lot of critiscism of Dale Jr. recently, but he will have his day again. It is amazing that the other 5 cars are in Chase positions. Kudos to them.
I normally rant and rave that Pocono is a boring race, but I am very curious to see how this one plays out. This is the first week of the double file restart rule, and that will throw a significant enough monkey wrench into mix to make it interesting. I have read a decent amount about how this rule works, and I still cannot wrap my head around how the lap down cars play into it. The way I understand it is that they will let lap down cars get back on the lead lap so long as they don't pit under caution. If that is the case, it will be interesting to see under what circumstances teams will gamble and stay out on old tires just to get their lap back. It should make for a bigger speed differential between the cars, and will probably lead to more wrecks. Not to mention the better racing at the front of the field. This rule pretty much gives Kyle a liscensce to dominate even more races.
As far as setups go, Pocono is pretty extreme. You need a ton of motor to get down the long straights and have a chance of running people down. However, like at any track on the circuit, corner exit speed (especially off of turn 3) needs to be high to get a good lap time. So you almost need to run a short track suspension setup to get through the corners, but you also need to keep the attitude of the car low on the straights, so you don't kill your straightaway speed. So this may require shocks with a lot of damping (like you would run at Charlotte) combined with a spring package that would run at Phoenix.
Predictions for this week. I am going to go for a Kasey Kahne win. The new Evernham engine seems like it is pretty stout, and I know they have a hot shit new low center of gravity car, so I think he will be a force. I will look to the 2 car to have a top 5 and continue their excellent season. As far as the 7 goes, this is the weekend that makes all of the team members cringe. RG is running the Baja and he will have to start dead last with zero miles in the car before the green flag. Luckily it is hard to go a lap down at Pocono, so it might not be as bad as it would be at other tracks. I will go for a hard fought 30th
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