Cup drivers, crew chiefs deal with dilemma Sunday at New Hampshire
Steve Letarte works as the crew chief for Jeff Gordon's No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team.
// Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Scene
LOUDON, N.H. – With 10 races left before the Chase For The Sprint Cup begins at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sept. 20, drivers and crew chiefs alike certainly have a dilemma to deal with heading into Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at the track.
One strategy is to approach the event business as usual. That plan would be a go-for-broke attitude to go for the win in hopes of earning an extra 10 bonus points to carry into the 10-race Chase segment, which follows a reshuffling of the top 12 to reflect earlier victories.
The other strategy is to treat Sunday almost like a test session for the first race of the Chase, the Sylvania 300, which could jumpstart a title run or seriously cripple a driver’s title hopes.
The latter plan would seem to be perhaps the most tempting to drivers such as points leader Tony Stewart and second-place Jeff Gordon. Both are almost assured a Chase berth because of their points cushion over 13th and would theoretically stand to lose little by taking risks that could prove more costly to others.
“It’s kind of a catch-22,” says Gordon’s crew chief, Steve Letarte. “You know, all the races [at Chase tracks], you don’t necessarily use them as a test as much as we really, really slow down to make sure we pay attention. If you got to the end of practice and you weren’t very good, you might change something for the race just to learn to come back. But we’ve already been to Dover, we’ve been here, California, Phoenix, some places that are going to be really, really important in the Chase. So [it’s] not as much of a test session as much as you know it’s a Chase race [site], so you make sure that you come here really prepared and make sure you leave here with good notes and at least a good direction for when you come back.”
But then again, there are other important factors to consider.
“You're still trying to go out and get those 10 extra bonus points, so you're trying to do the same things and you're trying to win each week,” says Stewart, who has fewer victories in 2009 than Chase contenders Mark Martin, Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth. “Those 10 points are valuable at the beginning of the Chase and you hope you don't have to count on them, but if [you get] that one extra win and you win [the championship] by seven points, you know that the deciding factor was getting a win in the preseason part of it. So you've got to treat it the same.”
But not all drivers with a relatively comfortable distance back to 13th see it that way. Hendrick Motorsports’ Johnson, who enters Sunday third in the standings, sees the potential advantage to possibly giving up a little bit of speed to learn something for September. Johnson, of course, knows plenty about sound championship strategy, having won the last three titles all under the current Chase format.
“We'll experiment with some stuff and try to validate it for here so when we come back we have a read on whatever package that is,” Johnson says. “So yeah, I guess in a certain way there is a level of R&D that takes place at this first race, but it's pretty well-scienced out. … At least for us, we're not looking for the homerun. We're just kind of making sure we've got it right."
Penske Racing’s Kurt Busch, who is fourth in points and has a smaller gap on 13th, is perhaps preparing for September even more than Johnson. That’s because he knows from experience how important it is to begin the Chase on a positive note.
“I think this is a very important race,” says Busch, who opened the Chase with a victory in his championship season of 2004. “This starts the Chase when we come back here in September. That’s how I looked at it in 2004 and that helped, at the time, give the team a big jump. We moved from seventh all the way up to second in points by starting off strong. It’s always important when you go around to the race tracks for the second time.
“Even though California is the second race of the year, you know in the back of your mind that it’s a Chase race when you go back there in October. So [New Hampshire] fits with all the other tracks that we’ve been to thus far that fit into the Chase.”
Busch’s crew chief, Pat Tryson, has a slightly different opinion on what the team needs to accomplish at New Hampshire this weekend. From his perspective, the 170-point buffer Busch has on 13th-place Kasey Kahne isn’t big enough to focus on September.
“I think there’s probably some guys that might try something different to try to make themselves better for September but where we’re at, I think we have to run good to try to get some more breathing room and get some space between us and 13th,” Tryson says. “You want to get as much space as you can before you try experimental stuff.”
But what about Stewart, whose points lead is so large that he could skip two races and still be in the top 12?
“I don’t think we’re really going to be experimenting,” says his crew chief, Darian Grubb. “We’re going to be doing more trying to optimize everything we can. We’re going to try to find every little nook and cranny we can get a little bit of speed out of. We’re not going to be conservative, that’s for sure, but I really don’t know that we’re going to go off the wall to try anything special. … We’re trying to get that 10 bonus points.”
