We're getting better, but still working to be great
by Larry McReynolds, Special to ESPN.com Editor's note: Veteran crew chief Larry McReynolds will provide a weekly column on ESPN.com. He's in Daytona this week and takes you inside the garage for Mike Skinner and the Lowe's No. 31 Chevrolet team.
I feel a lot better and a lot more optimistic about the Lowe's Monte Carlo than I did last Friday.
Even before we started practice this week, we did a little bit of drafting at the second GM test here in January, and we weren't real happy with what we saw. We went home and worked on things, but still weren't very good in Friday's Bud Shootout practice
But we just kept on working with what we had -- all the things within the NASCAR rules -- and I think we finally got it pretty good in Sunday's Bud Shootout.
It wasn't "snake oil," but rather a good line around Daytona that gave Mike Skinner a quick qualifying lap.
We were very fortunate on our qualifying lap Saturday. There was a lot of talk about snake oils and all those things. Mike got a little carried away with that. We didn't do anything that we have done different in the past. We pushed every envelope just as far as we could possibly push them. The weather conditions were perfect when we went, and all the things just fell in place.
What Mike meant when he said "snake oils" and "getting away with something" was that we did a lot of the same things that we did at Talladega
in October qualifying when we blew our engine. We did the same things Saturday, and it just so happened that we didn't have a problem. Things went
well for us and we got a good lap in. Mike really has a knack for knowing how to get a race car around here in qualifying.
People say, "Well, wait a minute. All you do is go out there and run wide open."
Well, there's just the right line to run on the first lap. There's just the perfect line to run on your second lap, which is where the quickest lap is run. There's even a perfect way to leave the pits and get up to speed to come to take the green for the first lap. And Mike understands that as good as anybody in this garage area.
With the Twin 125s and the Daytona 500 still ahead of us, the jury is still out. This is where a lot of things change at Daytona. Qualifying is
one thing, even that little ol' sprint race last Sunday for 25 laps is one thing. But you gotta get your car driving good. You gotta stay fast, but you
gotta get your car driving good.
The two years I've been a part of winning the 500 here -- in '92 with Davey (Allison) and '98 with Dale (Earnhardt), we had fast race cars, but we paid a whole lot more attention to getting our race car to driving good. Because once they've run another four or five races this week, the race track gets slicker and slicker. Chances are temperatures will be warm, a good-handling car will normally be the one to beat Sunday versus a fast race car. And that's just something we've got to work on.
I've got to be honest. If I look at the 125s, while no race is easy, it looks like we might be in the better of the Twin 125s. It looks like we're mainly
racing a lot of Pontiacs. This is where the proof of the puddings is going to be. We'll see just where these Chevrolets stack up.
There's no question Dale Earnhardt in the No. 3 car is "the man" at Daytona, and he's going heads-up against predominantly the Ford Tauruses of Rusty
Wallace, Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett. If he can't handle them Thursday, with him winning 10 or 11 of them in a row, we're probably in for a long day this coming Sunday.
We took what we learned in the Shootout and applied it to the 500 car. I talked about this last week, but I think the Bud Shootout is a great thing for a race team,
especially with a new race car. It just gives you more information to draw from, and it put us a couple of days ahead of a car that wasn't in the Bud
Shootout or the Bud Shootout qualifier.
We've still got work to do and we're working around a compound fracture here. We've got a new race car, and we've got a new spring and shock rule
that everybody in the garage area has. But, to some degree, it's had us throw all of our old notes away and start from scratch.
And you just don't have a lot to play with.
You've got your fender width, you've got spoiler degrees, which you can only go up with, so other than front springs, front swaybar,
and weight percentages, that's pretty much all you've got to work with in this race car because the rear spring and shock package is locked in.
A lot of drivers are complaining about the shock package, and they say the cars aren't running very well, but something tells me they're probably driving better
than they did a year ago.
A lot of people are asking, "What's the big difference in the 2000 from the '99?" Some of them are noticeable by looking at them, some of them are by
just knowing the race car. But there are a couple of differences.
The one that's most noticeable is the rear-deck lid. It has a hump in the center. Since the rear spoiler follows the contour of the deck lid, the rear spoiler has a big
hump in it. Well, that's more rear downforce, and that's good. You're always wanting more downforce in a race car. But, as I said last week, there are no
free lunches in aero.
When you increase downforce, you normally increase the drag and that's what we pay the most attention to at Daytona and Talladega, because that's how slippery the car goes through the air at a race track. In particular, a track where the driver never lifts the throttle. That's one reason you only see one Chevrolet in the top 15.
Probably the most unnoticeable change about this car is that the windshield, roof and most of the "C" pillar area in front of the back window is the
exact same pieces as the Pontiac Grand Prix 2+2. The difference we've seen, characteristic-wise, is that on last year's car most of the air wanted to go around the "greenhouse," down the windows.
On this particular "greenhouse," it looks like most of the air wants to go right over the windshield, right over the top of the roof, down the back
window to the real spoiler, which equates to some of the rear downforce that we have.
From the front bumper down, what we call the valance area, it's actually the same shape and size and configuration as last year's Monte Carlo. But the
top part, especially the headlight doors, are laid back a little bit more and that normally equates to a little more front downforce -- maybe a little
less drag. But the drag that it has helped in the front has not offset the amount of drag that has been added to the rear of the car.
