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Auto Racing
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Will this Brickyard Allstate 400 be an Indy surprise? Maybe Kevin Harvick again…..
By Mike Mulhern
INDIANAPOLIS Few NASCAR men can boast wins in both the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis’ Brickyard 400, but Kevin Harvick is one of them, and despite the hoopla about Tony Stewart here this week, Harvick is certainly a man who bears watching. If Harvick and crew chief Todd Berrier can box the gremlins that have dogged them this season: their third at Chicago two weeks ago was the first top-10 since Richmond in early May. “Performance-wise it’s been very good, we’ve just had a lot of things go wrong,” Harvick says of the three-month slump. “I think it shows the maturity and the experience of the team to keep ourselves in contention, and still have as many things go wrong as we’ve had go wrong. “I don’t think we need to do one particular thing better. It’s just trying to get the momentum on our side, get things going our way. If we can get the momentum to shift our way, and stay away from the other 42, we’ll be in pretty good shape.” And another win at Indy could set the stage for a good late-summer charge into the playoffs. “Winning Indy ranks right up there with winning the Daytona 500,” Harvick says. “I grew up an open-wheel fan, and a huge fan of Rick Mears, and always wanted to race in the Indy 500. Winning at Indianapolis was pretty special…and every time we go there it’s just the history and the mystique of the whole race track that I enjoy. Just everything about Indy is neat.” Few big tracks put such a premium on track position as this place, with its four difficult corners, and limited passing, despite long straights. “You need horsepower, you need your car to handle, and you have to put yourself in the right position with 25 or 30 laps to go,” Harvick says. “You also have to capitalize on the last pit stop and have good track position at the end of the race to have a chance to win.” The 400 is often lost on that last pit stop, as tight as pit road is, and as tricky as it is to get a good, clean stop.
One of the surprises coming into this race is Mark Martin’s bold prediction that he will win this event: “I’m planning on winning the Brickyard. We have the stuff, we have the team. “The cars are awesome on flat tracks like Phoenix and Richmond, and I believe we can adapt that setup to work better at Indy. “The team is strong enough on pit road…and crew chief Tony Gibson and the guys on that team are due a win.” Indianapolis is one track Martin has never won at. But he’s logged nine top-10s in his 14 runs. Last summer Martin pulled off, painfully, a sixth, after several major problems, including a broken gear and a pit road speeding penalty. “I’ve been looking to this race for quite some time actually,” Martin says, with curious enthusiasm. He is leaving the DEU operation at the end of the season, and his year with that team has been filled with ups and down. “A few weeks ago we shocked everyone when I said we were going to Indy looking to win the Brickyard 400, but I meant what I said. “Indy is one of the crown jewels of racing, and we have the team that can get it done. Our car was awesome at Phoenix and Richmond, and we parked it after that in order to have it for the Brickyard. “Sometimes miracles happen and it all works out. It almost did at Daytona for us last year. And Daytona and the Brickyard are the two that would be crown jewels of my career. This team can do it.”
Jimmie Johnson, sluggish so far this season after winning back-to-back championships, won here in 2006, but last year he got caught up in two early wrecks and finished 39th. “We’ve struggled at Indy for some reason,” Johnson concedes. “It’s definitely on our list of tougher tracks. “We were able to get a win a couple years ago, so we know we’re a team capable of winning. We just have to have all the pieces fall into place. “It hasn’t been bad performances that have kept us from good finishes. We just tend to get caught up in a wreck, or have some bad luck in the pits. “A solid finish is definitely within reach if we can just stay out of trouble.”
The book says Jeff Burton shouldn’t be a factor here. This hasn’t been a great track for him either. “Momentum is everything at Indy,” Burton says. “It’s all about carrying speed through the middle of the corner so that you can be fast off the corner. “Indy’s corners are different from any other track we race on – They’re shorter, and there’s less corner. “The track is perfectly smooth, and you have to have really good grip to take advantage of that smoothness. If you are a little bit slow in the middle of the corner, it just carries that speed onto the exit of the corner. “So it’s very important to handle in all parts of the corners at Indy. You can’t just handle well getting in or getting off; it has to be good in all parts of the corners.” Michael Waltrip says the huge frontstretch grandstands can affect how a driver runs: “This track is basically symmetrical. Both ends are alike. However, visually, because of the grandstands, it looks like you are going to go into a tunnel, with all the people. It makes turn one look twice as tight as turn three, when they are exactly the same. “For some reason, it is tough to get that in your brain that there are no differences. You have to fight yourself to try and drive both ends the same way.”
“That’s the thing about Indianapolis—There are a lot of people,” Clint Bowyer says. “When race day comes around, and you pull down into turn one for the first time and see all the people in the grandstands, it looks like you’re going to run right into the stands at the end of the front straightaway. Then all of a sudden the track makes a hard left. “The track is a square, so different than anywhere else we go. And completely flat.
“But you haul the mail. You’re flying in the corners. You drive around there in a street car at 80 or 90 mph and think ‘I’m going to get into this corner going about 210 and there ain’t no way I’m going to make it.’
“Anytime you have that many people in one place to watch you race is about as cool as it gets.” And the new winged car, making its debut here, could well be a factor, particularly with right-side tires, typically iffy here early in the weekend. “Indy is a very unique track, and since this is the first time for everyone to race the car-of-tomorrow here, it should be an exciting weekend,” Greg Biffle says deadpan. “It has not historically been my best track, if you look at the stats. But I’ve had a few good runs. So I think we can realistically look for a solid top-10 finish. “The team worked hard on the car at Chicago, and with some pit strategy, we were able to get a top-five finish. If we can keep that momentum going, and just be consistent in the last seven races before the chase, we should be in good shape.” Greg Erwin, Biffle’s crew chief, says it’s not the right-front tire he’s worried about but rather the left-front. “Indy is a unique track—which means we can’t really take what we’ve learned with the car-of-tomorrow at other tracks and apply it this weekend,” Erwin says. “Track position will be crucial…and historically taking care of the left-front tire has also been important. Goodyear is enforcing a minimum air pressure for the left-front tires this weekend though, so it may not be as much of an issue. “We will have to adjust to the mandated tire pressure, though, so that will be a minor obstacle. “We had a good run at Chicago, and now is the time for this team to establish consistency in performance. With only seven races left in the regular season, we can’t afford any mistakes.”
Teammate Jamie McMurray could be a wild card here. He’s been fast lately, and there is speculation his ride with Jack Roush may be on the line. Larry Carter, McMurray’s crew chief: “The last six or seven weeks we’ve had some really fast cars, probably the fastest cars we’ve had all season. “With that said, it’s going to be exciting this weekend—at a track that Jamie has had some success at.”
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