Auto Club 500 - Michael Waltrip Notes

Testing Will Help NAPA Team Turn the Corner in California

Fontana, California (Feb. 24) – Just one week ago the NAPA Racing team was celebrating in the brand new Daytona International Speedway victory lane after a convincing win in the first Gatorade Duel. Three days later in the Daytona 500, Michael Waltrip drove the No. 15 NAPA Chevy to the front of the field leading the second-most laps in the biggest race of the year. But after a blown engine led to a 37th-place finish in the 500, the NAPA team must get past an early setback in the points.

“We will go to California and try to make up for it,” said Waltrip as he turned his attention to this weekend’s race. “We had a good test out there and feel real confident about the team and where we are at as far as preparing for the season.”

Michael Waltrip and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. know that a key for success this week at California Speedway will be their preseason test just one month ago. At that test, part of a four day west coast session that included Las Vegas Motor Speedway on the first two days, the NAPA team really started to gel by the time they got to California.

“We felt really good about what we learned on our west coast tests,” said Tony Eury Jr, crew chief of the NAPA Chevy. “We were still learning and just getting to know one another at Vegas so that wasn’t a top notch test for us. When we went to California we changed stuff around and really hit on some things. We were really happy with it and we kind of got more of a feel for what Michael was after. California was a definite plus.”

Over the course of the four-day test session, chassis 022 was settled on to be the primary NAPA Chevy for this weekend’s Auto Club 500. Like many of the chassis the NAPA team inherited in DEI’s much publicized team swap, it has seen victory lane before, in last year’s spring race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Waltrip knows his car will only handle better between his preseason test and when it is unloaded this weekend.

“When you test with a team like DEI a lot of the time is spent gathering data,” said Waltrip. “We don’t analyze much until we get back home. You just collect and try and see what works. The guys that run the computers, the engineers, and the crew chiefs get together and come up with a plan. Every time when we come back we are better.”

NASCAR did not bring transponders to record speeds at the west coasts tests, so it is difficult to see from the outside how the NAPA Chevy compares to the rest of the teams. But if the momentum they carried into Daytona Speedweeks is any indication of how good this new crew and driver combination is, then look for the NAPA Chevy up front in California.

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