Raybestos Rookie Final Practice Speeds:
Hornish Jr. 33rd
Franchitti 37th
Smith 39th

The final practice session for the Auto Club 500 was cut short by rain. Steven Lane, crew chief for Raybestos Rookie Dario Franchitti, discussed the challenges of preparing for the Auto Club 500 with limited track time. Franchitti will start 26th in Sunday’s race.

STEVEN LANE, CREW CHIEF, No. 40 TARGET DODGE: “I think from the test here we left here with a car that was way too tight, and I think what he asked for was can you go back and make the front end work better. When we came back here he was like ‘Whoa, you’ve got the front end working so good now the rear is not keeping up with it. Had we had a little bit more practice time to get the front and rear hooked up, I think we would have been fine, but now it’s like we’re making a bunch of small changes so that we don’t go overboard. He’s very honest. He’ll go ‘Listen, I don’t know a whole lot about stock cars. I’m just telling you what it’s doing. I wish I could help you more but just keep me somewhere in between where we’re at now and where we left the test at.’ For me, that’s all the information I need. He’s going ‘Hey, backup halfway. Let’s start there and we’ll be fine.’ It’s definitely a difficult situation to be in because we don’t have a lot of notes to go back to that said hey, when we did this at so-and-so racetrack we fixed it with this and give me that. Right now he just doesn’t have that to fall back on and neither do I. We’ll just make the best out of it and this is part of our learning curve.” DID THE LIMITED AMOUNT OF TRACK TIME TODAY HELP YOU? “Absolutely, ‘cause if we’d have unloaded and raced like that, it would have been way too loose [laughs]. I imagine he’d have been back in there wanting to change something pretty quick so I’m glad that we got on the race track and he gave us a direction. Now it’s just a matter of whether we can hit it just right as to what he’s asking for.” WHAT MAKE THIS TRACK SO DIFFICULT? “I didn’t think the place was that difficult in the old cars. Naturally, these cars, I don’t think that we’ve quite got ‘em quite figured out yet. And then when you throw a new guy in there with it and he can’t say ‘Listen, in the old car if you’d have did this or did that, that’s what I’m feeling’ because he doesn’t have any of that to fall back on and that’s what’s making it difficult. We don’t have any notes, anything to fall back on, you know. So him telling me to go back halfway, that’s the kind of information we’ve got to work off of.” WHAT WOULD BE A GOOD DAY FOR YOU ON SUNDAY? “If we could come out of here with somewhere around a 20th-place finish I would be pretty happy. We didn’t do too good last week and honestly, neither one of us are happy with that, but I think we’ve got to start somewhere. We’ve got to start saying ‘Hey, if we just finish 25th every week’ then say ‘If we just finish 20th every week’ and if we can do that four or five times and go ‘Hey, now we need to start finishing 15th.’ If we finish 20th to 25th tomorrow, I’m going to say that’s a good day and a good place to start.”