Power struggle: Nationwide teams beg for help as NASCAR takes 10 engines
JOLIET, Ill. – NASCAR officials took 10 engines from Nationwide Series cars amid clamor from non-Toyota teams claiming they need help engine-wise to compete with the Toyotas.
It was the third time this year that NASCAR has taken engines for evaluation. It did so at Atlanta in March and Milwaukee three weeks ago.
Toyota has won 14 races in the series this year, while Chevrolet has won four and Ford has won two.
“We’re continuing our study on our competitive analysis and trying to balance the competition in the garage, which we’re kind of tasked to do,” Nationwide Series Director Joe Balash said following the Dollar General 300 at Chicagoland Speedway. “There’s a lot of rumor in the garage where things are at, and that’s why we want to make sure that we get the actual data.”
Dan Deeringhoff, crew chief for series points leader Clint Bowyer of Richard Childress Racing, said he believes the non-Toyota teams need help.
“Hopefully they are trying to come with what’s fairest for the series,” Deeringhoff said. “Toyota has got a definite advantage, but they’ve got a lot newer pieces [in their newer engines] than the American manufacturers have.
“The peak number is maybe 20 [horsepower] but I think the average is quite a bit more than what we’ve got.”
Bowyer’s was one of three Chevrolet engines taken by NASCAR. The other two were JR Motorsports’ Brad Keselowski and CJM Racing’s Jason Keller.
Toyota engines were taken from the Joe Gibbs Racing cars of Kyle Busch (the race winner) and Tony Stewart and Braun Racing’s Brian Vickers.
“If you come by the garage area after happy hour, you’ll see a strong correlation between the guys that are complaining the most about horsepower and the guys that are going home earliest [after practice],” said JGR crew chief Dave Rogers, whose No. 20 team has won nine races this year. “The guys that are on TV ranting and raving about horsepower, they put a car cover over their car a half-hour after practice [ends], go home and they’re the first ones through tech.
“You’ve got to work on these race cars. Toyota definitely has a good engine package. [JGR’s] Mark Cronquist, in my opinion, has always been the best engine builder in the recent history here. But you’ve got to work on these cars.”
NASCAR also took two Ford engines – from Roush Fenway Racing’s Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle – as well as Dodge engines from Chip Ganassi Racing’s Dario Franchitti and Gillett Evernham Motorsports’ Elliott Sadler.
Among the possible things NASCAR could do is change the spacer that limits air flow in the engine. NASCAR began using the spacer this year.
Balash said it would take about three or four days for NASCAR to run all the engines on its engine dynamometers.
“We have a lot of things that are available to us,” Balash said. “Based upon where the numbers shake out is what we would select. [Changing] spacers is one of the options. There’s three or four different ways you can use spacers.
“But we have to get to the numbers first and see what’s before we would even speculate what we would do, if we would do anything.”
