Raybestos® Rookies at Martinsville

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE HISTORY

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER POINT STANDINGS
DRIVER           POINTS
Kyle Busch         62
Travis Kvapil      59
Eric McClure       11
Stanton Barrett    11 

HIGHEST FINISHING RAYBESTOS® ROOKIES BY RACE
EVENT                    HIGHEST FINISHING ROOKIE
Daytona 500              Travis Kvapil, 19th 
Auto Club 500            Kyle Busch, 23rd 
UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400  Kyle Busch, second
Golden Corral 500        Kyle Busch, 12th 
Food City 500            Travis Kvapil, seventh 

Martinsville Speedway is acknowledged as the toughest track on brakes in NASCAR NEXTEL Cup racing. Kevin “Tiny” Hebert is the brake specialist for Penske Jasper Racing and gives his thoughts on preparing a car for the brutal conditions at Martinsville.

KEVIN HERBERT, BRAKE SPECIALIST, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: “I think the biggest things are the different types of compounds [brake pad compounds] that they’ve come out with lately. The biggest thing is keeping the temperatures down. We’ve had problems in the past with boiling the fluids and things like that but I think with the cooling and with the different carbon fiber packages that we have as far as cooling ducts and cooling off from the ducts out of the windows. We’ve tested and found that that’s been a big help. I think that along with the different compounds you can keep in manageable now.” DOES NASCAR’S GEAR RULE HELP YOU? GEAR SELECTION CAN HELP MAKE IT EASIER ON THE BRAKES. “That’s very much true. We really haven’t been anywhere yet to figure that out. We’ve had some really good tests. We tested Caraway for Martinsville and we had a really good brake test and I think that has a lot to do with it. I think that plays a major factor in it.” DOES TRACK POSITION PLAY A MAJOR FACTOR IN BRAKE LIFE AT MARTINSVILLE? “I really don’t think it makes a difference at Martinsville [laughs]. In a half lap you’re around to the rear of the field if you are in the front and vice versa. To be honest with you, a lot of it has to do with the driver taking care of his equipment, not abusing it, and under caution staying off of everything and letting everything cool down.” HOW MUCH MORE TIME DO YOU PUT IN TO PREPARE A CAR FOR MARTINSVILLE? “It’s about like superspeedways now. There’s a lot more time into those cars and we put a lot more time into the short track cars. Like I said, running cooling ducts, running all your fans, and all your duct packages and making sure that you have plenty of different types of brakes, different types of compounds for qualifying and things like that.” IS THERE ANOTHER TRACK THAT IS HARD ON BRAKES? “Richmond. Richmond is almost as bad as Martinsville, believe it or not. There’s a lot of speed down the straightaway. A lot of people don’t realize but those are pretty tight corners there and you get up a lot of speed on the backstretch and frontstretch. We actually run the exact same package that we do at Martinsville at Richmond.”