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 Night moves at Charlotte Track condition a day-to-dusk challenge at Coca-Cola 600
Posted: Monday May 24, 1999 02:43 PM
Any time you have a good weekend somewhere, you can't wait to get back. Fortunately for us, Charlotte is running again this week. We did have a good weekend for The Winston. Just about everything you can throw at a race team got thrown at us, but everybody responded really well, everybody kept working hard and it paid off. We would've liked to have finished five positions higher, but especially considering we started 18th in a pretty short race and lost track position on the inversion after the second segment, I'd say we did ok. A race like The Winston, well, winning is everything. There aren't any points on the deal so finishing fifth isn't as big as it would be in a normal race. For example, Jimmy Spencer finished second in the Winston Open, the preliminary race to The Winston. The winner of the Open moves into the big race; everybody else goes home. They were interviewing Jimmy after it was over and he was talking about how it really means nothing. A normal race, second is something to kind of celebrate. In these races, winning is absolutely everything. Now we have a long, short week at Charlotte. It's long because we start so Early, but it's short because there really isn't that much practice time. You don't do anything on Friday and you can have a lot on your plate depending on how well you're running. You'd think five days would give you all the time in the world. The truth of the matter is time is pretty precious, so you'd better make the best use of it you can. There are two really crucial days as far as Charlotte is concerned. Race day (Sunday) is one, but that's pretty obvious. In my mind, Wednesday is a pretty important day too. You have to have a good qualifying run at Charlotte. Qualifying day can make all the difference in the world for a Winston Cup team at Charlotte. You want the best track position you can get. Every track is a 'track position' track but Charlotte is more of one than just about anywhere else. It's funny because it's hard to stay up front, but it's hard to get up front too. Still, I'd rather be working on staying up front than getting up front. Qualify well at Charlotte and you have a lot of advantages. First of all, you start on the inside of the front row if you win the pole. Then you get a better pit spot because you are one of the first to pick a pit. Your first goal is winning the pole. If you don't win the pole, your second goal is qualifying as close to the front as you can. Pit selection becomes the main criteria then.
You definitely don't want to qualify out of the top 25. They have adjusted the schedule a little bit to help, but having to worry about second-round qualifying is not a good deal. First of all, you want that practice time Thursday to work on race setup, not qualifying setup. Secondly, it's still going to be tough to make your time better Thursday than it was Wednesday, unless you really had a problem Wednesday that you got fixed. Charlotte used to have second-round qualifying about 1 o'clock Thursday afternoon, and you had next to no hope on improving your speed from Wednesday night because of the heat and sunshine. Now you have some hope because it's later in the day Thursday (6 p.m.) but it's still going to be awfully tough to get better. I just figure that once qualifying is over Wednesday night, you're not only going to know exactly who will start where in the first 25, but you're going to be pretty close to figuring the rest of the field too, including who is going home. That Thursday night practice is probably going to be the next most crucial. Happy Hour (Saturday afternoon following the Busch race) is going to give you the conditions closest to what we'll start on Sunday night. That Thursday night practice will give us a good idea on what the car is going to do once the sun goes down Sunday. The 600 is like having one race on two totally different racetracks. You start the race on one track, and, after the sun goes down, finish it on another. Throw in some rain like we had a couple of years ago, and there's a third different track. The teams who are able to anticipate what the track is going to do and adjust are going to be the ones running up front. You've seen guys be junk at the start of the 600 and turn into King Kong once the shadows start falling. And you've seen guys run like crazy at the first of the race, but, once the sun goes down, they turn back into Clark Kent. We spend the week figuring what that race car likes in the sunshine and what it likes in the shade. The ones who figure it best are the ones who are going to win. We feel pretty good right now. This Mobil 1 Taurus team came through a lot last week, and we feel we can do some pretty good things again at Charlotte this week.
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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