Race 2 Win: USG Sheetrock 400 - Dave Blaney Notes

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USG Sheetrock 400 - Dave Blaney Notes

Dave Blaney
No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet
Event Preview Fact Sheet

Event/Date: USG Sheetrock 400 – July 10, 2005
Venue: Chicagoland Speedway – Joliet, Ill.

NOTES:

This Week’s Race Car at Chicagoland Speedway … Dave Blaney will pilot chassis No. 131 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) stable. Built new for 2005, this is the same car Blaney raced earlier this season at Las Vegas (started 29th, finished 13th), Atlanta (started 27th, finished eighth), Texas (started 12th, finished 26th) and Charlotte (started 31st, finished 29th).

RCR at Chicago … Kevin Harvick scored back-to-back wins for RCR in the 2001-2002 Tropicana 400 at Chicagoland. Additionally, RCR owns five top-10 finishes with Harvick and Robby Gordon at the 1.5-mile suburban Chicago oval.

Double Duty for the Bullet … Blaney will also be competing in the USG Durock 300 NASCAR Busch Series race Saturday, July 9 at Chicagoland Speedway. Blaney returns to the seat of the No. 31 Whelen Chevrolet for Marsh Racing.

Testing, One, Two, Three, Testing … Blaney and the Jack Daniel’s Racing Team tested at The Milwaukee Mile Wednesday, July 6 in preparation for next week’s New England 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway.

Meet the Driver … Blaney will sign autographs at the Jack Daniel’s souvenir trailer Sunday, July 10 from 11-11:45 a.m. A limited number of tickets are available and can be obtained at the trailer.

Up to Speed … Live coverage of the USG Sheetrock 400 begins Sunday, July 10 at 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on NBC. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and XM Satellite Radio will also carry the race broadcast live. Qualifying for the 18th of 36 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series events will be telecast live on SPEED Friday, July 8 at 4 p.m. EDT and can be heard live on MRN and XM Satellite Radio.

DAVE BLANEY QUOTES:
Since the NEXTEL Cup Series started racing at Chicagoland back in 2001, it’s always been a one groove race track. Do you see that being the case again this year?
“The last couple of years, the track has widened out a little bit. It’s a couple grooves wide now, so it has gotten better with time. (Kevin) Harvick has won a couple of races there so RCR has a good track record at Chicago. I think some of the setups we’ve been running lately well work really well on that style of race track so we should be good.”

You hear a lot about “cookie-cutter” mile-and-a-half racetracks but Chicagoland has its own unique characteristics – it’s not high-banked like Charlotte or Atlanta. Is it similar to Kansas or Las Vegas?
“It’s more like a Las Vegas-type of race track – the way the track races and the speeds. It’s a nice track. Like I said the last couple of years it has gotten a little wider so it has become more fun to race on. The first year was definitely hard because there was only one lane but once the track gets widened out everybody had fun.”

When a racetrack is newer, why is there typically only one raceable groove? What cause the one-groove racing dilemma?
“The newer the pavement is, the more grip it has. As it ages it begins to lose a lot of that grip. The track gets more and more slippery every year. When it’s brand new, there’s so much grip on the bottom of the racetrack, it makes the shortest way around the so fast, there’s no advantage to moving up the track to find grip because it’s so good on the bottom. When it slicks up a little bit, and the bottom groove slows down, then you’re moving up looking for more grip and it kind of evens out. Most race tracks are like that. The bottom groove is pretty common for the first couple of races. It’s not a matter of there being something wrong with the top of the track, it’s just not fast enough up there when a track is new. The longer way around just isn’t fast enough. Atlanta was the same way when they paved it. It’s nothing new – it just takes a couple years to get good and it has at Chicago.”

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