Subway 500 - Kyle Petty Notes

Kyle Petty Notes, Quotes: Subway 500
‘Keep brakes and temper from getting too hot’

Known for his prowess on the NASCAR Winston Cup short tracks, Kyle Petty and the #45 Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge team head to the .526-mile Martinsville (Va.) Speedway this week for Sunday’s Subway 500.

Petty, 43, will be making his 675th career start this weekend. He is 10th on the all-time list in NASCAR Winston Cup career starts, and fourth among active drivers. His eight career victories place him 45th on NASCAR’s all-time list in Winston Cup wins. One of the most recognizable names in international motorsports, as is his sponsor, Georgia-Pacific, Petty’s driving career began with a five-race season in 1979. The native of Level Cross, N.C., has won over $17 million.

The thoughts of Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge driver Kyle Petty heading into Martinsville:

“Martinsville is almost like a long, continuous left-hand turn. They throw the green flag, you gas and brake, gas and brake, keep turning left, keep turning left, and wait for them to throw the checkered flag to see where you ended up.

“OK, it’s not quite that bad but Martinsville is as demanding a track physically as any place we run. You really have to power the car to the left but do it with enough finesse that your back end isn’t sliding around through the whole race.

“There is more banking in the corners than you might think. When you are sitting in the grandstands or looking down on the track, there doesn’t look like there is a whole lot of banking in the turns. When you are standing down there, there is a lot more than you originally thought. Still, it’s more of the incline for Indy cars than for stock cars, so you really have to muscle the car through the turns.

“The inside line is always the place to be there. The inside is, first of all, the fastest way around the track. Some tracks you can jump off the corners a little better if you are running the middle groove. At Martinsville, it makes no difference. High or low, you pretty much get the same jump. In fact, get too high and you get no jump at all because there is no grip up there.

“The inside helps you take better care of your brakes too. For the most part, you are seeing a lot of cars on the inside using the outside cars as bank shots. You can use a little less brake going into (turns) one and three when you have another car to lean on.

“The disadvantage to the inside line is the curbing. If the car on the outside gets a little impatient with you leaning on him, he’ll start pushing back. It’s a lot easier for your leftside tires to get up over that curbing and, once they do, you either get hooked or you start sliding in the grass. Either one is pretty bad and, at best, is going to cost you a lot of track position.

“Brakes have gotten so much better over the years, and the cooling systems for the brakes have gotten better. It’s still an issue at tracks like Martinsville but not like it used to be. Twenty years ago you would see four or five cars run out of brakes early. They would ‘boil’ the brakes; in other words, the brake fluid would get so hot it would start to boil. Once that happened, air bubbles would get in the brake lines and it would make the car hard to stop at first, impossible to stop later on.

“Everybody has worked so hard on keeping the brakes cool that you don’t see that problem as much anymore. It’s still there and it can still certainly be an issue. But everybody spends a lot of time putting in air ducts to cool the brakes and brake lines, and getting their brake systems to where they can handle the heat. You can still lose your brakes but it’s harder than it used to be.

“If you can keep the brakes and the driver cool, then you can have a good day at Martinsville. There is so much beating and banging that it’s easy for a driver to lose his temper. The thing is, once you hit somebody you take a real chance at pushing your sheet metal down on your own tires. In other words, it might help you feel a little bit better to hit somebody back but, in the long run, it will come back to bite you.

“Brakes and temper . . . keep those two in check and you can have a pretty good day at Martinsville. That’s what we’re looking for with this Georgia-Pacific/Brawny Dodge.”

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