A Tight Box to Work With
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ATLANTA – The saying, “Think outside the box,” always carries a bit of irony, considering that it’s typically spoken to people who must work within a box, as their office cubicle promotes monotony instead of creativity.
And while crews in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series never have to work in the boxes beholden to corporate America, they’re still working in, or rather on, a box that requires them to – you guessed it – think outside the box.
Their box is the current generation stock car, which as it was being developed was referred to as the Car of Tomorrow (CoT). Thanks to a taller greenhouse that allows for more room inside the cockpit and a boxier overall shape that allows for more energy dissipating “crush zones,” the current generation car is far safer than its predecessor. But it also lost a bit of the uniqueness of the old car, with Toyota, Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford teams working with the same basic piece sans slight alterations in the contours of each make’s hood, nose and rear side window areas.
The result is a tighter box in which to work, but since the car’s debut last March at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway in a limited, 16-race rollout before becoming the de facto car in 2008, Joe Gibbs Racing found a way to make it fast right away.
Rewind to last year’s Subway Fresh Fit 500k race at Phoenix International Raceway. It was just the third race for the CoT, but already the three-car Joe Gibbs Racing Team had led 579 of the 1,004 laps available in the previous two races. The trend continued at Phoenix, with Joe Gibbs Racing leading 202 of the 312 laps available (64.7 percent).
Leading Joe Gibbs Racing’s CoT charge was Tony Stewart. The two-time Sprint Cup champion wheeled his No. 20 Home Depot machine to a total of 400 laps led in the first three CoT races in 2007, with 132 of those laps coming in last year’s Subway Fresh Fit 500k.
Stewart appeared ready to pick up his second career Sprint Cup win at Phoenix and his first of the 2007 season when he was handily leading laps 155-212 and laps 214-286 of the 312-lap race. But a caution on lap 285 for a three-car accident in turn four jumbled the running order, for just before the caution came out, Jeff Gordon – Stewart’s nearest pursuer – pitted for four tires and fuel.
Stewart pitted under caution, but came out in second as Gordon was awarded the No. 1 spot following the series of pit stops.
When the race restarted on lap 293, Stewart pursued Gordon, and made up considerable ground when the four-time Sprint Cup champion became stuck behind the lapped car of Martin Truex Jr. Stewart brought the estimated crowd of 105,000 to its feet with a daring three-wide pass of Gordon entering turn three. Stewart split the middle, with Gordon down low and Truex on the outside. Stewart emerged off turn four with the lead, but Gordon came back, and in the same corner where the two traded the lead a lap earlier, Gordon got underneath Stewart and made the pass stick for good coming off turn four.
Gordon led the final 13 laps, taking his first win at Phoenix and the 76th of his career, putting him in a tie with the late Dale Earnhardt for sixth on NASCAR’s all-time win list. Stewart finished second.
It was a bitter pill to swallow. After dominating at the track he calls his West Coast home away from home, for it’s where Stewart’s professional racing career began via a second-place finish in the 1993 USAC Silver Crown race of the famed Copper World Classic, Stewart made an angry beeline to the comfort of his motorcoach.
Stewart’s fortunes would improve later in the year as he rattled off three wins in a four-race stretch that included the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. Still, it never sat well with Stewart that he came oh so close in last year’s spring race at Phoenix. Now he returns to the desert oval a year later ready to capture the win that eluded him in 2007.
Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 20 Subway/Home Depot Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing:
How long does it take you as a driver to accept your finishing position?
“It depends on the day. If you’ve run between fifth and 10th all day, and at the end of it you get to third, you’re pretty happy about it. If you’ve been leading the race all day and you end up third, you’re disappointed about it. It depends on the circumstances that led up to it. There’s days that it goes both ways. It just depends on the scenario leading up to it.”
How much has it helped not having to work with two different types of cars this year?
“I don’t think it’s been a big deal for the drivers, but I know it has been huge for the race teams and the crew guys not having to have two different sets of equipment for two different types of cars. It’s allowed everybody to focus on this car versus dividing your attention 50-50 on two different types of cars.”
What’s the biggest difference between the current generation car and the car you used to run?
“These cars don’t have near the downforce that our cars had last year. With the limited amount of shock travel in the front, you’re hitting bump rubbers, and last year we weren’t allowed to have bump rubbers. It doesn’t float around the race track like it used to. It’s a lot harsher ride.”
The current generation car was built with a particular emphasis on safety. After witnessing some of your competitors take some nasty hits, how much safer can this car become?
“I haven’t felt unsafe in it. I don’t think they’re ever going to get them 100 percent safe, and if you do get to that point, you’re going to have guys wrecking all the time if they know they can’t get hurt if they wreck. It’s not saying that you don’t want to make them safer, but you’re still driving 3,400-pound cars at 190-200 mph and at the end of the straightaway is a corner that has a wall around the outside of it. It’s still laws of physics. It’s not like we’re going to come up with one magical solution that’s going to solve this. I don’t feel like there’s a big safety issue now, anyways. You look at the hit that Jeff (Gordon) took (at Las Vegas) and the one I took at Vegas and we were both in cars testing the next day. I don’t feel like we’re in a crisis to figure things out. NASCAR has people in place to make sure we stay ahead of that program and never lose focus on the issue of safety. They’re constantly working on it.”
How has the current generation race car made the racing different than in year’s past?
“Because they’re not designed to handle as well, it obviously puts the driver more in the equation. But what it’s put a high emphasis on now is engineering. You’re still not going to make it any faster than it’s able to go. Now, you have to rely on the engineers to find the combination that will make the car go fast, and then you just wrestle the car from that point. A driver won’t be able to make up the difference. We’re not going to be able to take a 10th-place car and run first with it. A driver might be able to maintain what he’s got, but if his car isn’t driving well, he’s not going to win the race, and that’s where engineering is coming more into play.
“As technology and time have marched on, the window of getting your car right has become smaller and smaller and smaller. The engineers work within that window to get the car right, but you still have to have a driver who can put it in that window and drive it to its capabilities. So now, when you have a window that small, if you can pick up a half-tenth of a second as a driver, that makes that half-tenth more important than it used to be five years ago. Back then, a half-tenth might’ve been a tenth-and-a-half. With the window getting tighter and tighter, it makes the emphasis on the driver more important. But it’s not just the driver. It’s still about getting that car right. That’s why the engineers play such a critical role. If they can find a half-tenth, it’s just as important as a driver picking up a half-tenth. It makes every area from A-to-Z that much more critical than before.”
Seven races into the season, the switch to Toyota seems to have been seamless. Did you spend any time worrying about the manufacturer change, or did you just figure you’d race with whatever you were given?
“It is what it is every week. I know it sounds real elementary and plain, but the race car is still going to do one of three things. It’s going to be tight, it’s going to be loose, or it’s going to four-wheel drift. We’re not reinventing the wheel here. We’re just driving a different car. It’s a matter of just getting the cars to drive the way you want it to each week. It’s been a non-event.”
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