Goulds Pumps/ITT Industries 250 - Derrike Cope Notes

Colorado NASCAR Busch Race Difficult To Figure
Cope, Advil Ford Team Want To Avoid ‘Longest Walk’

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Saturday’s Colorado 250 NASCAR Busch Series race might be hundreds of miles away from home but the race is a key one for the series. At least, that’s the opinion of #49 Advil Ford driver Derrike Cope.

“You have all of these teams hauling out to Colorado for this race. It’s a long trip and that in itself raises the bar a little bit for everyone,” Cope said. “You want to do well. You want to do really well. It’s horrible to go all that way and not do well.

“In baseball, they say the longest walk is from first base to the dugout after you get picked off. In basketball, from the foul line to the locker room after missing a no-time-left free throw. For our sport, it’s hauling all the way out to a track like Colorado (from North Carolina) and having a bad weekend. It’s an even longer ride home that you can imagine,” Cope said.

Because few, if any, NASCAR Busch Series teams want the expense of testing at Pikes Peak, few do so. That requires special preparation for the event, said the former Daytona 500 winner.

“You take your notes from last year and your notes from the year before, and you take your notes from tracks that are similar, and see what you can come up with,” Cope said. “It’s not as unscientific as it sounds. Remember, testing isn’t exact. You go somewhere a couple of weeks before the event and the weather, the track and everything else can easily change drastically by the time you get back for the race. You are still relying on notes, just more recent notes when you actually test.

“If somebody tests a track, that can give them an advantage. If several teams test, that can give them an advantage over the ones who didn’t. But if nobody tests, then nobody has that advantage. At Pikes Peak, that is normally the situation,” Cope added.

Temperatures can play havoc on the track surface as well. Cool nights and mornings, followed by very warm and sunny days, can cause changes.

“That’s another thing it is difficult to test for – temperature changes throughout the day,” Cope said. “Even practice is difficult sometimes because of that. On Friday, we’ll practice on one track and then qualify on another. Unless there is a cloud cover, the sunshine and temperatures can make the track into something totally different from hour to hour.

“It’s the same thing during the race, maybe even moreso. The heat and weight of the cars, coupled with the temperature changes, the track surface can turn into just about anything. But if you go into the race planning on making adjustment after adjustment – and figuring it’s your lucky day if you don’t have to make many – then you can have a good day there.

“That also makes track position pretty crucial. The track changes make it hard to pass a lot of times. So you are looking for every edge you can get, whether it is two-tire stops on pit stops or getting a really good restart or whatever. Every position is crucial,” he added.

Cope, a native of Spanaway, Wash., is a two-time NASCAR Nextel Cup race winner. A top athlete whose professional baseball career was cut short by a knee injury in college, he has become one of the top athletes in NASCAR racing, and has become one of the top public spokesmen for the sport.

Jay Robinson Racing, in its fourth season of operation, is one of the fastest-growing teams in NASCAR. Robinson, a Charlotte, N.C., native who is a successful businessman, founded the team as a high-value endeavor that offers high-end equipment and efforts, while proving to be one of the most cost-efficient teams in the sport. Robinson fields two sponsored cars fulltime on the Busch Series: the #49 Advil Ford and the #39 Yahoo! Ford, and runs a third car in many Busch Series events.