Mears having rough start at Daytona testing
By SceneDaily Staff Report
Thursday, January 10, 2008
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Casey Mears crashed two Busch Series cars during Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway last year and failed to make the race in a teammate's backup car.
His luck hasn't quite been that bad during Sprint Cup testing this year, but it's been close. Mears had a tire go flat Tuesday, causing his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to hit the wall. And on Wednesday, Mears blew an engine.
The crashed car suffered a "light brush with the wall," crew chief Alan Gustafson said, though it will need to be recertified at the NASCAR Research & Development Center in Concord, N.C., after the team repairs the damage.
"We're going to fix this car [and] get it recertified," Gustafson said. "Besides the recertification process, there shouldn't be anything that we can't fix. But that's something we've never been through before, and this is really the first time we've had a light brush, and we'll take that car back there.
"Fortunately [Sprint Cup Director] John Darby saw the car after it hit. I don't expect it to have any issues there getting it recertified. If there is, that's something we can talk to him about and work through."
Mears said his time in the car of tomorrow at Daytona has been "not bad," though he and other drivers have noticed the winged car has a tendency to be loose on Daytona's high banks.
"Everybody was having a little bit of an issue with the cars being loose at times, depending on where guys were around you in the draft," Mears said. "I think there's going to be those little things that are different about this car that are going to take time to kind of filter out.
"I feel like we've got a pretty good handle on that, got a pretty good understanding of what's going on there. But there was a little bit of a trend with almost everybody I talked to. People kind of getting loose more unexpectedly than they have in the past. But I think as guys have more opportunities to work with this car and make it better, some of that's going to go away just because it is new."
- Mentioned Drivers:
- Casey Mears
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