Carfax 250 - Stacy Compton Notes

Compton's Kingsford Sure Fire/Bush's Baked Beans Ford To Rely on Team Effort for Michigan Race

BROOKLYN, Mich. - If Stacy Compton's said it once, he's said it a thousand times: Racing is about people, not cars.

The people that make up Compton's Kingsford Sure Fire/Bush's Baked Beans race team share in the success of the team's second-half surge. The team has improved seven positions in the Busch Series standings in the last 11 races.

"This really was a new team," Compton said as he prepared for this Saturday's Carfax 250 at the Michigan International Speedway. "We switched from the Ford Taurus to the Ford Fusion and we brought in a lot of new people. I said it was going to take half the season for everything to fall into place, and that's what happened.

"It's easy to say at the beginning it's going to take time, then to be impatient when things really are slow to come together. That's the nature of racing; you want immediate results. But we stayed the course and we're a better team for it. Everyone on this race team has played a role in our turnaround. It's truly been a team effort."

Compton is ranked 18th in the standings, and the immediate goal is to be in the Top 15.

"That's our next goal, the Top 15," he said. "That would be a great finish during the season half and give us a great place to launch the 2007 season. There's no reason to believe it can't be done. The cars are so much better. We don't have everything figured out with the suspension, but we've got most of it down. And we're learning more each week. We know enough now to get a pretty good handle on the car every week. We're just an adjustment or two away from moving to that last level - the level when you run up front and contend for wins."

The most difficult aspect of developing a new team is creating an avenue of communication. The team now has that, Compton said, and with it comes a quicker way to find solutions.

"We're doing everything better," he said. "They understand what I need in a car. There's not a lot of second-guessing. And I have complete confidence in what they're doing. The pit stops are flawless; the race strategies have been great. Everything started coming together a couple months ago, and our results prove it."

And it's only getting better.

Qualifying for the Carfax 200 is at 11:40 a.m. Saturday. The main event is later that afternoon at 2:55 on TNT.

Stacy Compton Fast Facts