Almirola working to learn all he can while not driving
By Rea White - Associate Editor
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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Aric Almirola may not be in a race car every week, but he’s usually at the track working and learning with his Dale Earnhardt Inc. team. Almirola, who shares the team’s No. 8 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series entry with Mark Martin, is on tap to return to the driver role in the upcoming race at Talladega Superspeedway.
For Almirola, who is scheduled to compete in 12 Cup races this season, staying in touch with his team and in good physical condition is crucial to making his limited run successful. So far, that seems to have worked. He finished eighth in his opening race of the season and qualified third for his second, at Martinsville Speedway, before an engine failure relegated him to a 42nd-place finish.
Between races, the 24-year-old is testing for his DEI team, completing a regimented workout routine and trying to gather as much information as possible about both his team and his car.
So, even when he’s not racing, he usually heads to the track with his team.
“When I’m not in the car and watching, I just try to do the best I can at learning at much as possible, going down into the corner and watching different things,” he said. “I’ll stand up on top of the hauler and listen to practice, scan other people and listen to what Mark and [crew chief] Tony Gibson are talking about, just try to pick up on little things here and there and make myself a better race-car driver.”
Certainly, Almirola would like to be racing every week. Still, he doesn’t question his part-time role, but rather is thankful that he has
an opportunity with a team like DEI.
Right now, he’s concentrating on testing as much as possible. He recently headed to Infineon Raceway with teammates Regan Smith and Paul Menard to test in non-Cup cars in preparation for the June Cup race on the road course.
He says that test, and others he’s doing with the team, are really helping him learn about both tracks and the car NASCAR is using this season.
“It’s not racing, but at least you’re on the race track, and you’re making laps and you’re in the race car,” Almirola says. “That, for me, is
huge. The more time I sit in the race car and run laps and stuff like that, I learn a lot. It’s really beneficial for me. … I test quite a bit.”
Almirola said the road-course test was particularly helpful since he has never been to the track and, in fact, has only one race on a road-course in his stock-car career. He competed in a race in what is now known as the Nationwide Series in Montreal last season.
Almirola said that Infineon was an especially difficult track because it has so many blind corners. “I am definitely not up to par on my road-racing skills, just trying to fine-tune those," he said.
While he spends his testing sessions trying to improve his skills, he says his main focus in each is to learn the track.
That was highlighted at the California road course, where he not only had to learn to manage the 12-turn track, but also understand how to drive it when he couldn’t really see where he was going. He said that 90 percent of going fast at any track is knowing the facility and knowing where you are on it. That’s especially essential on the road course.
“There’s several parts on the race track where you’re cresting the hill and you can’t see the race track below you, and you have to know where you are on the race track,” he said. “I caught myself several times not knowing where I was on the race track because it was new to me, and when you’re unsure of where you’re at, you’re not going fast because you’re unsure. That was the biggest thing, was just learning the track and learning where to be sure of where my race car is at so I can be going fast enough to carry some speed through there without wondering where I’m going to land.”
Other than the testing, he’s enjoying the rare off week on the Sprint Cup schedule.
Then he’ll race at Talladega Superspeedway and prepare to patiently wait once more for another chance to drive.
Until then, he’ll focus on learning as much as he can from his teammates – by being at the track with them.
“The biggest thing is I try to go every weekend to keep building relationships with the guys on the team,” he said. “I’m part of that team, so I feel like I need to be there. All the other guys on the team have to go every weekend, so why shouldn’t I? I enjoy going. I love being at race track. I hate not racing and being at the race track, but nonetheless, all my friends are involved in the sport, and come Thursday, they all leave to go to the race track. So the weekends that I stay home and don’t go, I’m bored out of my mind because all of my friends are at the race track.”
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- Aric Almirola
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