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 On handling Martinsville 'One big wreck with a race in the middle of it'
Posted: Monday April 12, 1999 05:35 PM
Sunday's race at Bristol, Tenn., wasn't one of the best for the Mobil 1 Taurus guys. We slumped a little bit, I guess, and just didn't have a good day. Everybody worked hard and everybody kept looking to see what we could do to get a little bit better and eventually we did. But by then it was too late. Qualifying on Friday was the start of a downturn. We pushed through all four corners and it scrubbed a lot of time off our lap. After qualifying, we knew we were going to end up with one of the 21 pits on the backstretch; it was just a question of which one. Once you are set to pit on the backstretch at any track, you know it's going to be a tough day and a long day. Pitting under caution is what gets you. No matter how hard NASCAR works to make it even, the guys on the backstretch are always going to be at a disadvantage. You are going to have an almost impossible chance at beating anybody out of the pits on the front. We were still tight once the race started, and we had a little trouble with our ignition boxes at the first of the race. That cost us a lap. Later we pitted a little early and a caution came out a few laps later, costing us another two laps. We had to fight the handling and we had to fight the caution flags too. It just didn't make for a very good day. Now we head to Martinsville, our shortest, and, outside of the road courses, our flattest track. The Goody's 500 is Sunday. The spring race has usually been a pretty good one for me and it's been a pretty good one for this team. We were seventh there a year ago, and eighth the year before that. For a good while, my best Winston Cup finish came in the spring Martinsville race, fourth back with Cale (Yarborough). I don't know what could be such a big difference between the two races for us but there usually has been one. We have good luck in the first race and not-so-good luck in the second one. Martinsville is Bristol without the high banks. It's really fast and just about exactly the same length. It takes about 20 seconds to get around Martinsville and 15 to get around Bristol. Five seconds can be a lot of time in racing, but, believe me, you can't tell the difference in that five seconds sitting in the race car. Two drag strips hooked together by two no-banked turns, that's Martinsville. Those turns are kind of strange too. If you look at them from the grandstands or from up high, they don't look like they are banked very much. If you stand at the same level, they looked like they are banked pretty good. If you get the car up to speed, you don't see much banking there at all and you drive the track like there isn't any banking at all.
You pack 43 cars into that place and there is going to be some bumping and banging. Actually, that comes from a couple of things. That many cars all trying to fit into one space, well, you're going to have some bumping and banging. There's no way to avoid it. Sometimes you feel like the whole race is one big wreck with a race in the middle of it. I got out of the car after this race a year ago and somebody said, 'Hey, you did a good job missing that wreck up there.' All I could think to say was, 'Which one?' Another thing that leads to a lot of bumping and banging is the brakes and how you use them at Martinsville. Brakes are just about everything at the place. Marty [Gaunt, team manager and spotter] and Paul will start talking about brakes on the radio when we're on the warm-up laps for the race Sunday. And they'll talk about them all day long. Every other driver is going to be hearing the same thing. So you're spending the day thinking about the brakes and any way you can to conserve them. There are a few guys out there who conserve their brakes by using the cars beside them or in front of them. What they do is go into the corner a little harder than they normally would and bank off the guy beside them, or just kind of gently stick it into the guy in front of them. That slows the car down without taking any big toll on the brakes. The key to doing that, it seems, is to hit hard enough to slow down, but not hit so hard you punch in the front of your car too much. Not all of that is intentional. But that's where a lot of tempers start going. Martinsville isn't a good place for somebody who doesn't keep their cool. I usually keep mine pretty well, but the couple of times I've started to lose my temper, it's usually been after somebody has tried to punt me -- or I thought they were trying to punt me -- at Martinsville or Bristol. I can usually cool down pretty quick but there are a lot of guy who seem to have a problem doing that. If guys didn't hold their tempers as good as they do, the pits would look like the set of the Jerry Springer Show after the race was over. I guess there was a time you took your old cars to Martinsville because you knew they were going to get pretty well torn up, but you don't see much of that these days. This is a tough, hard, competitive series and you have to take your best stuff everywhere you go. Show up with some 'used' stuff and you won't have to worry about tearing it up. You'll be loading it up and taking it home before the race starts. There aren't any 'throw-away' races in this series. Every one of them is really important. Winning the Daytona 500 might get you invited to the White House, but winning at places like Martinsville is what gets you invited to the stage of the Waldorf [the New York City hotel which hosts the annual NASCAR awards banquet]. The points and winning championships are what our sport is all about. To be there, you have to be in the top 10. It's like winning races. First you work on finishing races. Then you work on finishing in the top 20 and then the top 10. After you're consistent in the top five, maybe your time comes for a championship. The fact Rusty and I have been able to stay in the top 10 for so long shows that consistency. We tested at Martinsville and had a pretty good test there. We think we're ready for a really good run. Torn up or not, that victory lane looks pretty nice there and we'd sure like to get in it. NASCAR's Jeremy Mayfield drives the No. 12 Mobil 1 Ford for Penske/Kranefuss Racing. His column appears regularly on CNNSI.com.
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