Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 - Ricky Rudd Notes

"CAN A BLOCK OF WOOD KEEP A CAR'S BODY IN SHAPE AT DARLINGTON?"

Getting around Darlington Raceway, the oldest superspeedway on the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series circuit, is on the minds of the fans of Ricky Rudd, driver of the #21 Motorcraft Taurus. This week, Rudd answers questions from his fans about setting up the car to race at Darlington, and how much that track affects the tires.

Is it true teams have or do put wood on the right side of cars (underneath the sheet metal obviously) for Darlington because of the increased chance of touching the wall? "They don't put wood under it. They actually wedge it in the door bars. The chance of grazing the wall there is greater than anywhere else we go. So what the teams will a lot of times is take little blocks of two-by-four wood and if there is a gap between the door bars and the skin, they'll wedge those blocks of wood against the roll bar so if you do make contact you'll hit that block of wood. It's got a little bit of shock absorbency to it. That hopefully keeps it from bending the rim or bending the rear end housing if you bump the wall. It definitely can help. I didn't know about the block of wood until I was driving the Wood Brothers car, and I saw that block of wood. I don't know that all the teams do that. I looked at that and said, 'You know. that is pretty smart right there. It's very simple, but very smart.' I'm sure they learned that from the old days when you used to have to run on the wall and actually had to hang the right rear quarter panel out there and let it scrape."

Are there any other special things done to the car specifically for Darlington? "No, not that I can think of."

Do you think safer barriers should have gone in at Darlington? Do you know how much of the track/racing groove you will lose because of the barriers? "Well, Darlington is sort of a unique race track. Of all of the race tracks we run on the circuit, if there was one track that would be at the bottom of the priority list as far as getting safe walls you would probably have to say that would be Darlington. And the main reason is that what does the damage is when you are running race tracks where if you are running on the bottom groove and have a long way to go up and hit the wall. Any tracks where the wall sits way, way away from the racing groove in the corners, that's where you have a better chance of getting injured. At Darlington it is sort of opposite of that. You run against the wall in the corner so if you do have trouble, even if you have a cut tire or a suspension break or two cars get together, you don't have a long way to go before you hit the wall. Those accidents, you usually walk away from at Darlington. If drivers were asked, 'Do you want soft walls at Darlington, but it is going to cost you 30 inches or three foot of groove, which would you go for?' Probably most drivers would elect, well, you would have a mixed crowd, short of rebuilding the entire race track, half would probably say they like soft walls, let's put 'em there. The other half would say the track is not wide enough; the racing surface is too narrow at Darlington to give up two feet of space. Right now I kind of believe that at Darlington it is kind of hard to give up two feet of space. I like the soft walls. If they had knocked the wall down and moved the wall out and kept the racing groove where it was I don't think there is anybody in here that would complain."

With the track already as narrow as it is, will adding the safer walls make the track too narrow? "I don't know the exact dimension before they gave up a couple of feet, but it was already too narrow."

Since the installation of the soft wall barriers cut out testing there this spring, how valuable will practice time become next week? "The trouble with practicing is that Darlington is a place that eats up tires. You go out and run one lap and the tires are gone quite a bit. You can't evaluate handling set-ups because the tires fall off so aggressively there. So it is going to make it very difficult. Even at Darlington if they gave you six hours of practice on the three sets of tires it wouldn't work. The only way to take full advantage of a test session at Darlington is to maybe free up some extra sets of tires there so that when you do evaluate you need at least a set of tires to get used to the race track. So again, Darlington is a race track where they might want to look at freeing up a couple sets of tires instead of being limited to the normal three sets."

Do you think the new tires will be a big factor in the race at Darlington? "Darlington is sort of like Rockingham. The asphalt is the same as Rockingham and it is kind of sandy down in that area of the country and the track gives up a lot of grip from a sticker tire to a scuffed tire. We'll have to wait and see, but I don't think it is a track where Goodyear will change the tires much from previous years."

How do the new tires affect your driving style? "I don't see any big difference in the tires. We have to manage them a little differently. You have to think about your tire pressures a little different. It's been more of a technical issue of how you do your tires. At some tracks we go to you play around with tire pressure quite a bit. It's changed that quite a bit. I think some of the guys who are already struggling, it's made it tougher trying to find out what the tires like."

Do the new tires feel anything like being on the old bias ply tires? "Again, I don't really see any difference in these tires. We go to Daytona and everybody was under the impression the tires were a whole lot different. Everybody was fighting a push there, us included. And I guess they really didn't change the tire there. They changed the number, but I don't think the tire itself really changed that much. The aero balance of the cars had shifted quite a bit because of the NASCAR rules. But come to find out Goodyear sort of got a bad rap about the tires being different when in fact they weren't. It was the spoiler change that everybody was feeling, the new aero package rules they were feeling, not the tire. So I don't know that the tire is a big issue. I haven't seen it yet."

Which track is harder on tires, Rockingham or Darlington? "They are both about equal."

What type of chassis are you guys using? "The Roush chassis. We did have a Laughlin chassis at Daytona."

What do you think will come into play most at Darlington, tires, horsepower, aero, gas or something else? "Tires are very critical at Darlington. But different chassis set-ups will aggravate that situation so that is what the teams search for. They search for set-ups that are going to be easy on the tires to keep the life in the tires as long as they can. You have to have the car balanced correctly, but it is a lot about tire management; keeping the chassis set-up underneath the car that doesn't abuse the tires. You can run fast five laps and be pretty well junk the rest of the run. You've got to have something that runs pretty well all the way through."

They say you either love Darlington or you hate it. Which is it for you? "I've actually enjoyed Darlington over the years. We've had some really good runs and I've been able to win there. And we've had some runs that weren't so great. But, it's a fun track when you car is handling good. It's definitely a track where you have to have your timing down right. It gets very busy in traffic. But there's a traffic flow there and as the race goes on, when you really have a good car there you get in a rhythm and you can work the lapped traffic. It's a fun race track to drive."

How does it rank in difficulty on the list of all the tracks on the Cup circuit? "I'd say it is one of the more difficult tracks to get your car set up for. I don't think it is that difficult to drive. It becomes a little more difficult in traffic when you're working lapped cars. It becomes a little more difficult but as far as difficulty in getting your car to handle there, it is definitely a tough track for that."

How do you feel about the Southern 500 being moved until later in the season? "It's just kind of messed me up on my time. It used to be when you'd go to the Southern 500 you knew what time of year it was. It was the first of September. It's going to have me all messed up now when we go back there and it is November."

Do you think Darlington is in jeopardy of losing one of its races? "You know, we are the last ones to know. I can't say that we don't care. That wouldn't be right, but we have no control over what NASCAR decides to do in steering the dates to the tracks they decide on. It's a track that ISC owns, so I guess they can do what they want with it. Tradition-wise you hate to see it moved."