DHL 400 - Ken Schrader Notes

Ken Schrader Notes, Quotes: Michigan 400
‘You rarely get what you expect’

Ken Schrader and the #49 Schwan’s Home Service Dodge team head to the wide, fast two-mile Michigan International Speedway for Sunday’s 400-mile NASCAR Nextel Cup stock car race.

Driver of the #49 Schwan’s Home Service Dodge, Schrader is a native of Fenton, Mo., and the busiest driver in major league motorsports, Schrader has raced on virtually every type of speedway in virtually every type of race car, and continues a winning career with BAM Racing, which fields the Schwan’s Home Service team.

The team is owned by Beth Ann and Tony Morgenthau, investors from Coral Gables, Fla. Ms. Morgenthau, whose initials make up the name of the team - BAM Racing - is the only female car owner in motorsports to become involved without prior family connections. General manager Eddie Jones is a veteran of the NASCAR Nextel Cup wars, enjoying a championship career as a crew chief, mechanic and team leader. Crew chief Scott Eggleston is one of the few active crew chiefs in the business to have won a Daytona 500. Business manager Gus Larkin is a successful veteran motorsports marketer, and leads the corporate sponsorship activities.

The Schwan Food Company is a privately held manufacturer and marketer of fine frozen foods through its nationwide Schwan’s Home Service home-delivery service, its Schwan’s Consumer Brands North America retail grocery business, and its Schwan’s Food Service Group foodservice unit. Headquartered in Marshall, Minn., Schwan’s production and distribution activities in the United States and Europe employ 24,000 people. Among its well-known brands are Schwan’s®, Tony’s®, Red Baron®, Freschetta®, Pagoda®, Mrs. Smith’s®, and Edwards®.

The thoughts of Schwan’s Home Service Dodge driver Ken Schrader heading into Michigan:

“A lot of times, the only way you can look at Michigan is - whatever you expect, you’re going to get something else. Michigan has a way of starting you out one way and finishing you up another. How the place figures out what 43 different race teams are thinking and comes up with a 44th way of doing things is beyond me, but somehow she does that.

“You go into these Michigan races with all sorts of big plans . . . we’re going to do this with the engine, we’re going to do that with the chassis. You look at a hundred different lines around the track, and try to figure where it is you want to run. Lot of choices there, from lines around the track to chassis combinations to engine combinations to gears and everything else.

“The thing is, you practice and you work and you change things and you get better, but in the back of your mind you know that it could all go out the window if the cards don’t fall right for you. The way the cautions fall - or don’t fall - play a bigger role at Michigan than just about anywhere else we run. How many times have you seen a guy go out at that place and just blow everybody away, lead most of the laps and then pit with five laps to go and finish 20th?

“The one thing you wish you could work on the most is the one thing you can’t really do much about once you get to the track - fuel mileage. You can do little things here and there, and the driver can do little things, but for the most part, your mileage is going to be pretty well determined once we get started with practice.

“The main reason there are so many fuel mileage races at Michigan is because there just aren’t that many cautions. The track is wide and there are at least two or three racing grooves, even for the worst-handling car, and you just don’t see that many wrecks. For the most part, it doesn’t take a major toll on engines, so you don’t see that many blowing and spilling oil. Take those factors away and you’re just not going to see many cautions.

“Figuring fuel mileage is easy at the start of the race. OK, how many laps can we go under green? 51? OK, perfect. So if I pit on lap 149 (of 200), then I can finish the race on fuel. If I do that, then my pit stop before would be on lap 98. And if I can do that, my first pit stop would come on lap 47. You figure it backwards to figure it forwards. Assuming the race goes green the whole way, I don’t gain anything by pitting before lap 47, and my window gives me until lap 51. So if it looks like a lot of guys have stopped under green on 46 and 47, I might wait until 50 to come in, just in case there is a caution.

“In a perfect world, or perfect race, you take it from there. Where it gets weird on you is when you have a caution at lap 35 or something, and everybody in the pits is throwing around calculators and note pads, trying to totally refigure the mileage. There are computer programs that figure it too. For figuring fuel mileage, you throw everything out when you pit under caution - for calculating, it’s a brand new race from that point on.

“To make a fuel mileage race worthwhile, though, you have to run with the leaders. You have to stay on the lead lap and keep the leaders in sight. Do that, figure your mileage right and get a couple of breaks, and it could be a great day for you at Michigan.”