Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 - Rookie Friday Quotes

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER FEATURE FOR THE BASS PRO SHOPS MBNA 500 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY, OCTOBER 28, 2005.

SHANE WILSON, CREW CHIEF, No. 77 JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS/KODAK DODGE: ARE YOU PLANNING TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CAR OF TOMMOROW TEST? “That’s a good question. I know that at Penske Racing, our car isn’t quite done yet and I believe the first one that we’re making is kind of a speedway car. I’m sure our engineering staff will be down here checking it out like they were the last time they did it. To be quite honest, I’ve just been focused on this year and trying to get the stuff we have right now running better and I’ve just kind of blocked that out [smiles]. I’m not even up to speed on all the stuff of the Car of Tomorrow.” WILL THE NEW CAR CREATE A LOT OF EXPENSE FOR YOU? “The cars are very, very different, and I’ve heard different things about when they’re going to switch over and when they’re not. I think they’re all trying to figure that out, but the cars are just enough different where some of our piece and parts are still going to work but the chassis are different, the bodies and how they’re hung are different. It’s going to change a lot. The problem with changes is more cost. It may be the right answer for the future but the present is more people working on that trying to figure it out and more cost because they’re building more cars. That’s the one thing in Cup, the one thing that doesn’t change year to year is that our chassis are fairly similar. We’re running chassis that have been worked on every year but are really five or six years old. That’s quite a big hitter. A lot of teams in Cup have between 15 and 20 chassis per team so that’s going to be quite a big hitter.” DOES THAT MAKE THE DIFFERENCE BIGGER BETWEEN THE BIG TEAMS AND THE SMALL TEAMS? “The intent of the rule is to probably bring everyone together in the long run but initially it will help the bigger teams and hurt the smaller teams until everyone races those cars for a while. I think the initial hit will be the bigger teams will have the advantage for a while and then the intent of the rule I think will be, but it will be more in the future.” HOW MUCH OF YOUR FLEET DO YOU REPLACE EVERY YEAR? “We’re in a little different situation. We’ve got some cars from the 2 and the 12 and they’ve been building us some new cars because we are kind of a new team with Penske, but like I said, we’ve got cars that are all updated and run fine that are five and six years old. There’s nothing wrong with them, they’re all updated, so that’s going to be the bigger hit is the chassis expense. There’s a lot of time in a Cup chassis with the way all the sheet metal is welded into the thing. It’s a little more complex than your Saturday night cars or even the trucks.” WILL THE NEW CAR MAKE ALL YOUR WIND TUNNEL NUMBERS OBSELETE? “For sure, all that work will be gone, but that’s usually part of a three-year cycle, anyway, even just from the Intrepid to the Charger. It seems like things that worked on the Intrepid do not work as well on the Charger and we’re always looking for that little bit on the Charger. But that’s a current cost and that’s been going on for 10 or 15 years. That’s just the way it is, but the new car, that’s just going to be so much different. It’s going to be kind of relearning some stuff again.” WERE YOU SCHEDULED TO TEST AT HOMESTEAD? “No, we’re all done. The 77 car is done testing. I think our car of the future will be ready for Homestead or the next speedway test.”

ALAN GUSTAFSON, CREW CHIEF, No. 5 KELLOGG’S CHEVROLET: YOU TESTED AT HOMESTED. WILL THAT BE A BIG ADVANTAGE? “We went and believe it or not, we were the only car there and there was no rubber on the racetrack, and I know you don’t want to hear this, but we corded tires in 18 laps. I don’t know how much of an advantage that’s going to be. It isn’t going to be as good as a normal test. We just got back from Texas with a lot of cars there for two days with a lot of rubber on the track, which was really good. I do think it is an advantage but where it would normally be a big advantage it’s probably not going to be as big because of conditions.” WILL YOU PARTICIPATE IN THE CAR OF TOMMOROW TEST? “Hendrick Motorsports has a car and Brian Vickers is going to drive it. The 5 team, we’re not directly participating, but Brian is going to run that car so I’m interested in his feedback. Lance [McGrew, Vickers’ crew chief] is going to stick around and help them out.” HAS THAT BEEN A GROUP PROJECT FOR HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS? “Jim Long has a crew of guys that are heading it up and taking car of it and building that car. We haven’t been really that involved yet. This will be the first time that some information is going to come out of it. We will probably sit down and look at and talk about it and say ‘Okay, this is what problems we had and this is what we didn’t have.” DO YOU THINK THAT MOST OF TEAMS PARTICIPATING IN THIS TEST WILL CUT UP THEIR CARS AFTER TESTING HERE MONDAY? “I don’t think NASCAR’s done refining it and I don’t think any of the teams, definitely, we’re nowhere close. It’s going to evolve a lot. I hope it does. The good thing that they’re doing and I like is that it needs to be an evolution. You need to have a lot of tests on it. We’ll do different things and take time because our cars have gotten to where they are 50 years of evolution. It’s a good package. Obviously, there are things that we can make better, but it’s going to be hard to it in two weeks or a year or so. As it evolves it will be better and it will be good for us to get feedback from Brian and how he feels like it drives and engineering-wise we can say ‘Okay, this is what we need to work on’ and these are going to be the issues with this car.” WILL YOU HAVE TO THROW OUT ALL YOUR AERO NUMBERS? “You don’t throw them out, but you’re going to have to start looking at everything in a different way. All the principles always stay the same, the fundamentals stay the same, how you do what you want to is different. We’ll try to do the same things with those cars that we do with these cars and if somebody doesn’t think that, they’re kidding themselves. We’ll try to do the same things and how we accomplish that will be different.” WILL THE CAR OF TOMMOROW BE MORE UNIFORM? CAN YOU RACE THE SAME CAR AT MORE TRACKS? “I don’t think so. I think a race team is always looking for an advantage. The advantage may be cut down from this car that runs Richmond to Atlanta may be three-tenths now that may be cut down to a tenth. But everybody in this garage area would take a tenth [smiles]. So no, I think you’re going to have just as specific cars. We sat down and looked at it and travel wise, your fleet’s got to be size of our fleet. You can’t do it any other way. With the Phoenix-Texas swing coming up right here right now, is a perfect example. You’ve got two cars in Texas ready to go and you’re going to turn two around right away. I don’t think the car-specific is going to change any. I think you’re still going to have very specific cars for short tracks, superspeedways, and intermediates.” HOW MUCH OF YOUR FLEET DO YOU REPLACE EVERY SEASON? “We have a fleet of 12-14. We will replace one or two, but we’ll revamp every car. Some cars will go as far as having a complete body off, some cars won’t. Some cars you’ll change clips from fatigue or wear and tear. The only way our cars go away would be like Charlotte where we totaled out that car, that car goes away, any maybe one other that you’ll get rid of just because it’s older in your fleet and if you wreck it too many times you get concerned about it. We don’t want to replace many.”