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Final night race The key at Richmond: Getting through Turn 2
Since this is being posted first on Labor Day, maybe that’s where we ought to start. You know, NASCAR racing was pretty much founded on the working people. The guys racing the cars and the people sitting in the grandstands were workers. They worked in factories or gas stations or were mechanics or farmers or whatever. There weren’t a whole lot of captains of industry sitting there when the deal first started. And even though our sport has changed a whole lot over the years -- and the demographics don’t even compare -- I think we still have a base among the working folks. They are the ones who follow us week in and week out, and they are the ones who are our most ardent supporters. So, especially since it’s Labor Day, I wanted just to say "Thank you" to all of our fans everywhere. We know we couldn’t do what we love to do without them. The Labor Day Sunday race, well, I definitely had mixed emotions. The Mobil 1 Taurus was the car to beat, plain and simple. Of the 120 laps we ran, we led all but 14 of them -- and 12 of those came under caution. Our lead one time was over four seconds. We lost that to a caution flag and then moved back out to a nearly four-second lead again before we wrecked. The wreck was just a simple example of how tough Darlington can be. You have to race the race track. You have to be patient. You have to give and take. When that didn’t happen up there in the turn, we ended up in the wall. Disappointed? Absolutely! But nobody on this team is hanging his head. We know how good we were and we know, especially without the weather, how good we would have been. We did our best to make it a dull race. Instead, Darlington got a piece of us - a big piece. But we will be back next year! Now, we have to start looking ahead. Richmond is next. It’s a three-quarters mile D-shaped track that is fun to drive, always a good race and can be pretty tough. We have to look ahead. We’re looking to win races, plain and simple. The points thing has pretty much passed us by because of the circumstances this year, so all we can shoot for is what we can do the last part of the season. We’ve won two races and we’d like to win a few more before the year is out. Even though Rusty has won several now, we think we still have a shot at winning the most races this year. That’s our goal right now. We’re going to run up front. Things might not always work out for us the way we hope but we’re going to run up front. If you look back at the two short-track races this season where our finishes weren’t all that good, our cars were pretty good. We were one of the fastest cars at Richmond the last time there, but Joe Nemechek got hit and he hit me -- it saved him but it put me in the wall. At Bristol a couple of weeks ago, we were moving up through the pack when I cut the tire down. That thing “whacking” away for a couple of laps did a lot of damage, and we lost laps trying to pit that we couldn’t make up. Both times we had good cars. Circumstances just kept us from finishing where we wanted to finish. Knowing what we know and knowing how good our cars have been this season, Richmond could be another really good run for us. We feel pretty confident right now. There are a lot of good things ahead for this Mobil 1 Taurus team, and we’re excited about them. Richmond would be a great place for it to continue. Richmond is one of those tracks where every single lap is important. I know that should be the case everywhere we go and, from a lot of standpoints, that’s true everywhere, but it really shows at Richmond. Each lap can be crucial. For one thing, there are only 400 of the things and it only takes a little over 21 seconds to click one off. That gives you 21 seconds to get where you want to be, set your car where you want it set and begin making a move you want to make on the next lap. Pit at the wrong time there, and a caution can cost you two or three laps, and definitely will cost you one. Make a little mistake at the wrong place, and you can drop five or six positions in a heartbeat. Take advantage of somebody’s mistake at what is the wrong time for them, and you can find yourself sitting pretty well. As far as handling is concerned, there are some teams who start their setups from the second turn and work their way out. We don’t take it to quite that extreme but the second turn is the key to the whole track. The track is more of a D-shape than an oval and the most difficult turn is Turn 2. You sweep into the first turn and then have to cut it pretty good to the left to get through two. The guys who get through the second turn the best seem to always have the best runs. Three, four, the frontstretch and turn one are all “sweepers.” The second turn is the only one that’s really different from the rest and, compared to the rest of them, it’s a pretty hard left turn. Richmond is definitely not a track where you want to be tight. That thing has to turn all the way through, especially in two. If you handle well there, you can be fast. If you are a little loose there, you can be fast. If you are just a tick tight, it’s going to slow you down. This is a pretty important race for everybody. For us it’s important from a number of standpoints. This is the last night race of the season, and these night races -- especially on the short tracks -- always seem to play a big role in how the points shake out. It’s right at the end of the second third of the year. For us, it’s one of the closest races we have to the guys at Exxon-Mobil (corporate headquarters are just north of Richmond in Fairfax, Va.). We usually have a good group of people from ExxonMobil who come down for the race, and it’s like a family weekend in a lot of ways. Richmond is a track that means a lot to everybody but especially to the guys on this Mobil 1 team. We think this Mobil 1 Taurus team can be pretty good at Richmond. Historically, this team has run pretty well at Richmond and we think we can do that this time too. We’re excited about getting going again. Penske-Kranefuess driver Jeremy Mayfield won earlier this year at Pocono and California. His column appears weekly on CNNSI.com.
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