NASCAR eliminates rookie practice for Nationwide, truck series
By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor
Friday, February 22, 2008
FONTANA, Calif. – NASCAR has eliminated the rookie practice portion of its weekend schedule for Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series teams.
For the last two years, the Nationwide and truck rookies would get an extra practice (typically a half-hour session). They would get a set of tires specifically for that test session.
Now, practice sessions have been increased by about 30 minutes for the entire field. But rookies get an extra set of tires for the race
weekend. That extra set can only be used in practice.
“It would be great if we had more practice than the veteran guys, but that extra set of tires allows us to run all the laps,” said Roush Fenway Racing truck rookie Colin Braun. “They have so much practice where if you only have one set tires, you can’t maximize all the laps anyway.”
Rookies said they could impacted more at a short track such as Bristol and Martinsville, where it will be difficult to get a good mock
qualifying lap in.
“I get less open track time,” TRG Motorsports truck rookie Andy Lally said. “The other thing is the seasoned veterans can now take their time and do some more changes. It’s a little bit of a disadvantage compared to the past what rookies may be able to gain over the vets. But if it makes sense for the series, because there just aren’t that many rookies, what you end up doing is giving too much to too small of a group of people.”
Some rookies were only using the rookie practice for mock qualifying runs and there were times where rookies didn’t even use the
practice.
“Giving them a set for that one practice didn’t necessarily work with the way they’re trying to set up the cars, so this might be a little
bit better to still give them a set, give them the extra experience on the track but not doing it in a separate time frame,” Nationwide Series Director Joe Balash said.
Rookie practice was implemented in 2006 when NASCAR put its new testing policy into effect. That policy forbids testing at tracks where the series competes in except for the official NASCAR tests. Before then, teams were limited in the number of tests but could test at whatever track they wanted, so teams with rookies often would take them to test where there was a steep learning curve.
Both the Nationwide and the truck teams had at least three hours of practice scheduled for California this weekend.
“I knew we got an extra set of tires and I kind of thought we would have our own session,” said truck rookie Marc Mitchell, who is driving for Billy Ballew Motorsports and had a few races last year in the Busch Series where he participated in rookie practice. “We used it for a mock run because you could get a clean lap.”
