Kurt Busch, Jamie McMurray think Daytona, Talladega are completely different
Roush Fenway Racing's Jamie McMurray and Penske Racing's Kurt Busch talk to the media Tuesday at Daytona International Speedway.
// Jerry Markland, Daytona International Speedway
Roush Fenway Racing's Jamie McMurray says that racing at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday and then testing at Daytona International Speedway on Monday certainly highlighted the differences between the two restrictor-plate tracks.
McMurray won at Talladega Sunday and then traveled to Daytona Monday for a two-day Goodyear tire test. He said that drafting on the tracks back to back really showed why the races at the two are so dramatically different even though they’re both similar in length and banking and both mandate the use of restrictor plates to slow the cars.
“It was really incredible to go from Talladega on Sunday to here on Monday because this track [Daytona] is so rough and it's so slick that when people got on your bumper and they pushed you into Turn 3, you were waving your hands inside the car like, 'Get off of me', because you were sideways in the car," he said.
He added that he doesn't think the difference is necessarily a result of changes that have been made as NASCAR moved to the new model Sprint Cup car but rather to the newer pavement at Talladega.
McMurray also says that is part of the reason that the races at the pair of superspeedways play out so differently. And while some have questioned the single-file racing that dominated much of the early portion of Sunday's race at Talladega, McMurray said that he didn't really think the racing was all that much different from what he had experienced, as a driver, in the past.
The crucial element that has changed, he said, is that more drivers have the big picture in mind and understand the need to make it to the end.
"I remember in 2004 and 2005 with the other car, Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. riding around the very top of the race track and everybody following him, I remember it being really similar to that," McMurray said. "More than anything now, I think that the drivers have learned that they have to make it to the end of the race in order to win the race, so maybe they don't take the chances that they did a few years ago. But when everybody got single file, it wasn't like everybody was in the car and we were like, 'Let’s get single file and prove a point or let’s just follow each other.’ It's that you had to be in the outside groove because that's where all the momentum was.
"And then once everybody got up against the wall, unless you could get 10 or 12 cars to go to the bottom - I mean there were guys throughout the whole race that were running 20th or 15th that pulled down to try to make it two wide, and if people didn't go to help them, they went all the way to the back of the line. So I didn't see racing was that much different, and I really don't see any reason that we would need to bump-draft through the corners."
McMurray said that when people first began bump-drafting in the corners at the track, it made the drivers feel fairly out of control in the cars. Then they realized how well that could work because the track had been repaved and the cars had so much grip.
Still, drivers admit they were concerned to see cars leaving the track and flying through the air, as Stewart-Haas Racing's Ryan Newman did in this race and others have at the track in the past.
Penske Racing's Kurt Busch, who was also participating in the Goodyear test, says that is something NASCAR definitely needs to look into and try to stop in the future.
"It's [be] careful what you ask for," Busch said. "We wanted bigger greenhouses to protect the drivers, but also what a bigger greenhouse does is create a bigger parachute for the air to grab when a car turns around in reverse. That's why the cars are lifting a little easier.
"Do we need better roof flap systems? That's something we need to look at. Cars are definitely flipping over very too easy."
