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NASCAR Manufacturers’ Panel

Here, from NASCAR’s weekend at Las Vegas, is the first of the 2005 NEXTEL Cup manufacturers’ panels. The panel this time includes Stu Grant of Goodyear, Jack Roush representing the Ford teams; Bob Wildberger, Dodge Motorsports senior manager, NASCAR operations; Alba Colon and Pat Suhy from GM Racing and Robin Pemberton representing NASCAR.

Nextel Manufacturers’ Panel

An interview with:
PAT SUHY
ALBA COLON
JACK ROUSH
STU GRANT

ROBIN PEMBERTON; BOB WILDBERGER

LARRY McREYNOLDS: I’m Larry McReynolds, doing some spokesperson work for NEXTEL. I know last year I think they did three or four of these panel discussions. Felt like the timing was right. We have two races under our belt in NEXTEL Cup, three races under our belt in the Busch Series, to maybe get some of the people from the manufacturers here to try to answer some questions. What we’ll do is introduce them and then what I will do is ask them a couple of questions, then we’re going to open it up for questions.

We were in the back room talking a while ago before we came out here, headed into 2004 last year, it was a season of change to come, but not necessarily changes that affected the race team, the rules. We had a new series sponsor that came on board, NEXTEL. We had a new fuel supplier with Sonoco. We had a new Chase for the Cup. We had a lot of changes on the exterior of the garage area, you might say.

Heading into 2005, we had all of those things in place, it became the season of change within the garage area. We had a manufacturer come out with a new car. We had a gear, transmission change, we had spoiler changes, a tire change. That’s obviously what we want to do here this morning is try to get an update where we’re at with all these rule changes, with the manufacturers and the teams.

I’ll start right here. We have Stu Grant, who is general manager of global racing for Goodyear.

Next to him, Jack Roush, owner of Roush Racing. In case you haven’t run the numbers on Roush Racing, as we get ready for Las Vegas Motor Speedway, at the mile and a half to two mile flatter tracks, one team in particular, the 16 team, Greg Biffle, they’ve won two of the last three races. When you look at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, I think Roush Racing has won five of the seven races, if you believe in the numbers.

To his right is Bob Wildberger, senior manager, NASCAR operations, Dodge Motorsports.

Beside him is Alba Colon, which is GM Racing Chevrolet program manager for NEXTEL Cup.

Beside her is Pat Suhy, who is a GM Racing group manager for NASCAR.

Last but not least, my friend at the end, vice president of competition for NASCAR, Robin Pemberton. We’ll save the best for last maybe with Robin.

Stu, we were talking in the back a while ago. Obviously one of the things that was changed this year in NASCAR, and it kind of became a package deal, you might say, with the aero changes that NASCAR made on the rear of the car by taking the rear spoiler away, a little softer construction, a little softer compound of the tire. The thing that I’ve noticed is the aggressive setups that maybe the teams have run in the past, that it has put that on a little more of a fine line. It has to be a challenge, I would say, for you guys to educate these teams about the aggressive setups with the newer tire.

STU GRANT: If you look back over the last several years, we have a lot of discussions with the teams and the drivers and so on and NASCAR about improvements that we want to make on the racetrack, improvements in the racing that you see. We made a number of changes in ‘04 with the rule changes. The spoiler was reduced. We did a number of evaluations of our performance at each particular track, and we made a number of strides in ‘04 on making the tires softer, giving cars a little more grip with the spoiler reduction.

We went through the same process again as we went into 2005. Most of the way through ‘04 we sat down with NASCAR, reviewed the on‑track racing and said, Let’s go one more step with the spoiler reduction and another step with the gripier tires, softer tires.

As you look ‑‑ as we move into 2005, you almost have to look at it at a track‑by‑track basis. At California, we were considerably softer in ‘05 than we were in ‘04. We probably had twice the wear rate in tires, which is something that everybody is looking for as an objective. Certainly we were faster than we were in 2004.

If you look at Las Vegas, you’re not going to see the big change in speed from ‘04 to ‘05 simply because we were more aggressive last year in terms of making a softer tire for this particular racetrack. What you will see here is a left‑side construction change to try to improve the loose end comment that we got from the drivers with the spoiler reduction. That’s just a result of some of the testing that we did in ‘04.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: Stu, one of the drivers commented after Fontana, I think it was Jimmie Johnson, that with the softer tire, cars sliding, moving around the racetrack, they expected to lay a little more rubber in the second and third groove at Fontana. I don’t know that we ever completely saw that second and third groove of rubber completely come in.

STU GRANT: Yeah, I think what happens is it changes over the course of a fuel run. There’s a lot of grip in the tires initially. Drivers try to take advantage of that. You want to run the short way around the racetrack on that low line. That’s what they do. That has a tendency maybe to build some rubber up in some of the outside grooves.

I think it’s going to be a factor of the tracks in particular. You’re going to see second or third groove maybe easier than some other racetracks, I think.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: Jack, the Fords did not have any changes last year coming into the 2005 season with the exception obviously of the reduction of the rear spoiler. I know one of your crew chiefs in particular, Kurt Busch’s crew chief, has talked to me a lot about the fans and media maybe don’t understand that there’s so much more than going to the back of that car and lopping an inch off the rear spoiler. You basically go through a body change with the Fords simply trying to get that balance back with the reduction of the rear spoiler.

JACK ROUSH: Let me see what I’ve got here. That’s my Ford hat I’m wearing today. I would give you a different answer if I had a Roush Racing hat on.

I’ll answer around your question. The balance has certainly been a concern. I guess the Fords ‑‑ last year, most people at Ford thought they didn’t have competitive down force. Certainly didn’t have more than they needed. Certainly didn’t have it built out of the car, which I’ll talk about in a minute. I think the rule may have played into the Ford’s hands a little bit. If we were down a little on front down force and maybe a little heavier than we needed on rear down force, we took an inch off of it, it wouldn’t leave us in as bad a shape as we might have been.

One of the things I’d like to note about what’s happened with these bodies generally over a period of time was it was great pressure in the mid ’90s from NASCAR to want to make the tech thing easier. Robin can comment on that if he wants to, depending on which hat he’s wearing today. But Ford was the first one on stage really doing what NASCAR wanted, which was to take a set of templates that they conceived more around the package of the chassis than around what the manufacturer might have liked to have the greatest identification with its car.

The advent of this common template thing was really the Ford in ‘97. I just decided to come in, and then they picked up some of Bill Elliott’s cars. I’m sure Bill might want to comment on that ‑‑ Bob might want to comment on that. They improved the nose and the tail in the things they had.

Chevrolet and Pontiac said, “This Dodge thing is coming along pretty good, the Ford thing is maybe still okay, so we’ll get some of it, too.”

They ultimately got the nose and tail that was the third generation. Ford didn’t get a change from ‘97 until 2004. Every year the Ford was diminished by new templates or by new tech strategies from ‘98 to 2003.

We probably hadn’t figured out how to use that to our greatest efficiency in one year. I know as we finished, as the Ford teams finished 2004, there were a number of different strategies with the cars, different aero balance routines, and we understood what was better and what was worse. Speaking for the Roush guys, you know, we accentuate the positive and beat down the negative.

Given the fact that we were a little heavy on the front to start with maybe ‑‑ I’m sorry, a little heavy to start with on rear on down force and a little light on front when we cut the inch off, we weren’t in as bad a shape as we might have been.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: Did your drivers ‑‑ your drivers had great runs at Fontana. Did they feel about the tire, aero package, when you caught a car, you could go ahead and pass them?

JACK ROUSH: Well, yeah. I’m sure they got what they wanted there. My guys really like mile and a half racetracks. Now I’ve got my Roush hat on. They really like mile and a half racetracks. Their input back to the crew chief and selections they make for bars, springs and shocks will make more difference there than it will other places.

The thing that you’re going to have to do, and there’s going to be winners and losers here, the drivers that are willing to drive loose race cars are going to excel in this package. The drivers that like to have their race cars on the tight side, they’re going to definitely be losers.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: I’m going to jump down to Robin Pemberton. Robin’s time is limited with us.

With all the changes this year, we talked about the gear, the transmission change, the spoiler change, the things that NASCAR is mandating within all the competitors. Daytona, Talladega, rear springs, rear shocks, they’re starting to look at shocks everywhere. Have we about reached the pinnacle of the fact that no more things may be limited by NASCAR or controlled by the governing body over the teams?

ROBIN PEMBERTON: Never say never or never say always. You know, we’re always looking for things. I think we’re at a place and time right now where we’re trying to lock in some aero numbers, let the teams just get their feet up underneath them, maybe not make so many rule changes the next year or two, knowing that we have some things coming down with the car tomorrow and different engine packages and things like that.

Right now we’re soliciting feedback from the teams, the manufacturers. Car owners and crew chiefs don’t always have the same agenda either. We’re trying to filter through some of that, make some decisions that are good for everyone. I think we’re at a place and time we need to sit back and look and watch the competition and see how it gets over the next half a dozen races. I think the teams have done a great job adjusting to the spoiler and tire package so far. We’ll see what happens this weekend.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: You mentioned the car of tomorrow. What is the latest update that you can give the members of the media on that car?

ROBIN PEMBERTON: Well, we continue to work on it. There are things that we find working on that car of tomorrow with absorbers for side impact and some other things that come out of it, that we may be able to implement on present cars where we’re not tearing up everybody’s fleet of chassis and bodies and things like that, where there’s the monetary ‑‑ the cost of it will be nil to a car owner. There are things that have come out that are good that we can implement maybe by next year or at some point in time that really will go unnoticed for the most part.

I think the support will come from the teams and the manufacturers, knowing that we’ve got their best interest at hand. I think that’s important.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: Bob Wildberger, senior manager of NASCAR operations, Dodge Motorsports. Unlike the other manufacturers, Bob, you guys have a new car this year. You have the Dodge Charger. I think what a lot of people don’t understand is with all of the templates that NASCAR controls on the car, it was essentially more so just a nose change, a tail change, the look of the quarter window. When I watched qualifying at Daytona, it appeared that you guys attacked down force more than you did trying to reduce the drag of that car. After one race under your belt at Fontana, the down force racetrack, where do you think these guys are with these Dodge Chargers as far as the aero balance?

BOB WILDBERGER: Obviously, we came into this year with, as you said, essentially a new car. I mean, once you change the nose and the tail, the quarter, you’ve got a very different aerodynamic package you have to fine tune.

You know, it takes some time for the race teams to understand exactly how to fine tune a new vehicle, plus add to that the rule changes. However, we knew that coming into the season. Between the Dodge teams and the Dodge engineers, we did an extraordinary amount of work in the wind tunnels, as much testing as was physically possible, and we think we’ve got a pretty good early handle on the car, despite the changes coming into the year.

No question you focus on balance and down force because, you know, 32 of the 36 races, that’s the bread and butter, that’s where you’ve got to be. But we’ve taken a lot of steps with the new vehicle to address the superspeedways, as well. I think if you look at the results at Daytona this year, while winning is everything, but we ended up with three in the Top 10, which is an improvement. I think you’ll see continued improvements in the Dodge camp on both the superspeedways as well as getting the car fine‑tuned. We expect a very strong year.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: The one thing I notice when I look at the new Dodge Charger is the look of the nose. It’s that Dodge look about it. Of course, on the mechanical side, looking at the grill openings, it looks like it would almost pick up the time of day. At the same time, Stu has a little softer tire, a lot more rubber on the racetrack. The temperatures are fixing to start coming up at the racetracks. It’s going to be awfully hot here. It appears they’re almost too efficient because these guys want to tape them up, yet they cool good, now they’re tacking rubber up in them. I think they have a little bit of work to do on the nose of this thing as far as the cooling inlets.

BOB WILDBERGER: That question has come up. Certainly California was a race we studied. We’re still pretty confident that the nose is going to work out extremely well, not only now but into the long run. At California, for instance, there were some overheating issues, but that was across all brands. It was not restricted to Dodge. One of the things we looked at is we did not have a Dodge engine failure at California. There were competitors that did. Again, we’re learning the new nose. We think it’s more efficient. The teams themselves are reporting back to us that they feel very, very comfortable with it. Again, we feel good about it.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: We’ll move over to Alba Colon, GM Racing, Chevrolet program manager for NEXTEL Cup. We have a gear rule this year. Listening to the gears that the teams are allowed to run, it appears from maybe 2004 you increased the rpms a little bit ‑‑ it did reduce the rpms a little bit, but it appears more so that the intent of the rule was to keep the rpms from continuing to go to 11,000 and whoever knows from there.

On the flipside of the Roush Racing success at Fontana two weeks ago, big hit in the Chevrolet camp. A lot of engine failures, especially in the Hendrick camp. Some cars looked like they potentially could win the race. You get a feeling maybe that was not rpm related, especially now that they pulled rpms back a little bit.

ALBA COLON: First of all, you know, the Roush guys really did great in California, but we were glad to see our cars, our teams were really good also.

Unfortunately, we had an issue in the Hendrick camp. I’m not allowed to comment about that. But pretty much was the same issue in all the vehicles. It was nothing related really with the rpm or the gears.

We love to do horsepower, everybody does. When NASCAR put that rule, of course we were like, “Come on, we don’t want to see that.” I hope everybody knows that. But we went back. The teams worked hard. Pretty much everybody has been pretty happy with the results. Unfortunately, we had that situation over there in California, but that has been resolved. We know that we are going to do good.

But, again, it’s one more challenge that NASCAR put out there for us. We get along, don’t worry about it. But is part of the deal. We will be okay.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: The first thing that I noticed about 15 minutes after the Daytona 500, if you listened closely, you could hear the chassis dyno running wide open in the garage area, something they do on a pretty regular basis. We know one or two horsepower can make a huge difference with a restrictor plate engine, like at Daytona and Talladega. Do you feel as a whole maybe at the restrictor plate racetracks that the three makes are pretty close on power with the way the rules are?

ALBA COLON: Pretty much. You know, we would like to see our numbers a little bit higher of what they were, but pretty much we knew where we were, and we were pleased with the results, yeah.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: We’ll move to our last panelist, then open it up for questions. This is Pat Suhy, GM Racing, NASCAR group manager.

I asked Robin about tapped out for right now on the changes that NASCAR has made this year. He kind of alluded they would love nothing more than to let it run its course. At the same time do you feel like you have to keep thinking about, “Are they going to reduce the spoiler even more? Is that something our teams will maybe have to deal with in the near future or down the road a little bit?”

PAT SUHY: I think as a manufacturer, that’s one of the things we always have to do. The teams have to go racing every weekend. They don’t spend as much time as they could or should all the time thinking about, “Well, what if this happens or what if that happens?” That’s one of the thing we try to apply our tools to, work about the future things. We work on projects that try to answer those questions.

We’ll no doubt look at a shorter spoiler. We’ll look at different side configurations, things like that, even if they’re outside of the current rules in anticipation of potential changes.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: What is the future, and it may be working in conjunction with NASCAR on the car of tomorrow, car of the future, a new Chevrolet, a new Monte‑Carlo? Is it coming in the next year or two? Where are you at on that?

BOB WILDBERGER: I think this year you saw the new Dodge Charger introduced at the Detroit auto show with the unveiling of the race car. We have a Monte‑Carlo on similar timing in terms of the production release. We are actively working on a 2006 Monte‑Carlo that you guys will see at the 2006 Daytona 500.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: Real quickly, Jack, future of the Ford? New Taurus, new Ford coming out any time in the near future?

JACK ROUSH: There’s a new Taurus. I’m sorry. There’s a replacement for the Taurus that’s coming. I don’t know if the name of it has been released yet. But we’re doing a 4/10ths scale model testing right now. We haven’t got a full‑sized car. But there is within the confinement of NASCAR’s common templates, there is a new nose, tail being organized for a new Ford entry that my understanding is will be ready for 2006, as well.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: With that, we’ll open it up for questions.

Q. Robin, maybe the inconsistency of the track schedules, next week will be race No. 4 for NEXTEL Cup, and we’ll be dealing with the fourth different type of schedule for the weekend.

ROBIN PEMBERTON: It’s like anything. If you look back at the TV contracts, there were racetracks that had pre‑existing agreements with sponsors and other networks when it came around. This is along the same lines where, as we try to move forward and do impound schedules everywhere we go, it is unique to each racetrack under the contracts they have and sponsor obligations for pole day.

We have worked with all of the racetracks, and it’s one of those situations where we at NASCAR hope we get back to a common schedule like we had in the past. It’s probably a few years away. We hate that it goes this way, but early on we’ve had two or three different schedules.

As you know, Daytona is Daytona. There’s a few other racetracks that have all‑star events or whatever, and they’re unique. We have to address those as one‑offs.

We’re pushing towards the impound schedule. To a degree, it’s better for the teams, not all the time, but in theory it will be. It will help on their expenses. Eventually when we get across the board, it should help with their travel expenses. As we look at it, as the crew’s time away from home, it’s not getting any easier, teams are getting better, harder to manage, harder to move across country. We don’t race in our backyard like we did 15 years ago every week. So that’s how we address it. We’re looking down the road for it.

Q. The fact that 15, 20 years ago, we had very boxy cars, a lot of drag, not a lot of down force. The cars are getting smaller, more aero‑efficient. Why do we not look at maybe going back that direction a little bit?

ROBIN PEMBERTON: I mean, to your point, we’re doing meetings right now. We’re putting some things together at the R&D center that have never been done before where all the manufacturers are invited and partaking in these meetings from engine development for the next few years and for things that will help racing all across the United States and North America.

We are addressing the aero issues. Last week ‑ was it last week ‑ last week we were together discussing all the aero rules and regulations and potentials, trying to get to where the manufacturers are going to be in a couple years. Not all of them are going to be square and boxy, but we’re talking about it and see where we all wind up with that.

With cutting the spoilers, with doing some other things, we’re taking away down force. We have some ideas to add some mechanical grip back where the teams will be able to race side by side, where we’re not relying on the air. The air comes and goes as they get in traffic and out of traffic, but mechanical grip does not. Those are some of the things that we’re working on as a team, all of us together. We do these meetings about 30 people. The meetings have gone very well. They start off slow at times, but after about the third or fourth hour, they get going pretty good.

Honestly, I mean, the engine thing, we’re on about our fourth or fifth meeting, the body and aero rules, they’re coming down the pike. But I will say, I think if you look back at the races, and the people that say 15 years ago the races were better, you obviously weren’t paying attention.

Part of our pep talk 10 years ago when we went to races, and I’m going to put one of Jack’s hats on, crew chief hat or something, when you used to go to Bristol, you used to tell the guys, “Don’t be depressed, because if you’re three laps down, you’re still going to be fifth or sixth. If you’re a lap down, you’re going to be second or third.”

Nowadays, when you’re at Bristol, which is probably one of the hardest, most competitive races going. At the head of a 400‑lap event, you’re sitting there with 25 and 35 cars racing each other on the lead lap. You take that, I think that’s closer racing than what the other was 15 years ago.

Q. Jack?

JACK ROUSH: I’d like to make a comment for Ford here.

I’d like to answer the question in two parts. The first question as to how the cars ‑‑ why the cars aren’t boxy, what the logic is for the common templates. And the perception of why the cars run so close together, whether that’s good or bad depends on which side of the argument you want to take.

When Ford looked at the prospect of its cars, its choices it had for ‘97, they didn’t have a two‑door rear‑wheel drive car that was a candidate. They had a four‑door front‑wheel drive car. From the base of the windshield to the center line of the front axle, there isn’t enough room to package a rear‑wheel drive, five‑liter, six‑liter, V8 engine that has a carburetor and you can’t mount an air cleaner on. There isn’t enough room. You have to extend the hood forward.

As you look at the architecture of the roof for the four‑door car, you don’t get enough air to the rear spoiler. You need to come back and make some changes to make it fit a NASCAR chassis with a NASCAR drivetrain component. That was the initial thing that got the thought started, being willing to accept a common template format that NASCAR wanted.

Everybody’s got the same problem now. There’s not a two‑door ‑‑ the Monte‑Carlo I guess still is, but Dodge and Ford don’t have a rear‑wheel drive, two‑door sedan they can work from. That gets the cars into not looking like they did when they came from the manufacturer’s showroom.

20 years ago, and Robin was there, I wasn’t quite at 20 years ago, but your Chevrolet people, the Ford people that were there, the Dodge people, the teams will go down to a dealership and they would put their thumb up and sight across the moon and they’d make a decision as to which body they thought was going to be the best. They would pick the Buick, the Pontiac, the Chevrolet, they picked the Mercury, they picked the Ford, they would pick one of the Chrysler variants and said, “All right, that’s a slick car, that’s what I’m going to do.” Guess what? Those cars didn’t run the same on the racetrack. They did dip shapes. Some of them were winners, some were losers. Some were extraordinary draggy with down force, some were with less down force and cleaner. Those cars would have different personalities with different results, depending on which racetracks they were on.

That’s how the cars got to be different. The teams aren’t making the decision based on looking at them in the showroom. They’re basically served up a package of templates they have to conform to that makes the cars look all pretty much the same. By the way, they look more like the cars that you drive than they would ‑‑ I’m not a proponent of putting these big straight windshields on them, doing all this stuff that we’re headed for. I consider that to be just another matter of making a jump ball out of it to see who is going to catch it.

By the way, it’s probably still going to be the tallest guy. Every time we do a rules change is to have a jump ball. We’re going to figure out the tall guy always gets the ball. I’ve been short all my life. These tall guys are always getting the ball whenever it’s a jump ball.

Anyway, you can come back and say, “All right.” My understanding is Bill France has objected at Daytona to have 43 cars go across the finish line together. We’re not quite wide enough for that. If we can stack them high enough, we can get that done, and we try.

At any rate, the difference, like Robin said, that you’d see at Bristol or even Martinsville or a lot of these people where you bang ‘em up, tear ‘em up, do all this rubbing, you can’t come back and recover from something that happens in the race because everybody is so good and so close. That’s really just a matter of this overall thing becoming more sophisticated and more refined where somebody that had Jack Roush’s background and mentality and approach today, probably couldn’t get in, which Robin and the guys let me in in 1988. I don’t know if they regret that.

But, anyway, it takes ‑‑ it’s much more sophisticated in terms of the skill sets that are involved and the technologies that are known. The spread of what the performance capability is going to be on the racetrack is much reduced regardless of what the manufacturer has done just because of the people being so much more able on making decisions on what they race and how they race.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: No question when you listen to Jack’s answer, he’s been hanging out with Robert Yates. In 1986, I was working with the Buick people. They put their thumb up at the side of a Buick Le Sabre and decided to give that to us as a race car. After two weeks, we decided if we cut the body off and put it backwards, it would run faster.

Q. Over the next five races under evaluation, what are you really looking for? Are you looking at the competition? Are you looking at speeds, a whole gamut of things?

ROBIN PEMBERTON: They’re not just looking, they’re listening, too. You have to listen to the competitor, driver, crew chief, how hard the car is to work on, how hard it is to drive. You just listen. We’re not going to make midyear rule changes. We think we’ve probably done a decent job at this now.

The gear rule, we didn’t really put anybody out of sorts. There were some that were farther advanced than others, but I think that we hit the numbers pretty close at California, and I think they’re going to be close here.

We just want to be with the competitor, listening and making sure that we did the right thing. If we go — if we’re looking at things for next year and beyond, you know, you always get criticized first three or four races of the year of rule changes. It always takes the competitor three or four races to get their legs up underneath them.

We’re just going to track the trend. The same guys are going to be happy, the same guys are going to be mad every year, no matter if you have a rule change or not. Those guys we don’t listen to, we go down the middle on that.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: Robin, it really was not a rule change this year, but it has certainly caught a lot of people by surprise. I call it the be careful what you ask for rule, you might get it. Pit road speeding. Do you think the teams now, the drivers, understand how it’s being monitored and where we’re at with pit road speeding?

ROBIN PEMBERTON: I think so. We’re getting a lot of good feedback. If you go back over the course of last recent few years, you know, there’s certain people that always got busted for speeding. There’s guys that never got busted. There’s more of those. And they are very happy with the pit road speed because now it’s brought everything closer where pit road speed shouldn’t enter into a position on the racetrack. Now it’s down to the crews and the driver getting off the racetrack and accelerating out.

It’s worked out really well for us ‑ knock on wood. We’ve been very open with the competitors, told them how much speed they had to work with to be evasive if they had to miss something on pit road. They know their margins. It’s been quite nice to see when we look at the numbers and the tower that everybody is falling in within 10ths of a mile an hour for pit road speed. It’s worked out well. The competitors, I think they’ll all benefit from it and it will put it back in the hands of the driver and the crews on pit road.

Q. Are we looking at in the near future, Pat or Alba, are we looking in the future for engine replacement reduction? Less cubic inches? Is that something that has been talked about in the meetings? How long a response time would the manufacturers and teams need to respond to that?

PAT SUHY: I think without getting into the details, like Robin said, we’ve met with NASCAR, all the manufacturers have met with NASCAR I think three or four times now. There’s really been nothing that’s been left on the table in terms of what we’re going to do to try to reduce the horsepower, you know, get to a more environmentally friendly fuel, and again try to reduce costs for the race teams.

As far as lead times for the engines, I think all the manufacturers have, you know, current suppliers of components. I think it’s reasonable to say it takes a year or a year and a half to go from kind of a clean sheet of paper or semi‑clean sheet of paper, depending on where your current design is, to all new tooling for blocks and heads. You know, there’s some opportunity for some of the manufacturers that it may not be a complete tear‑up, but a revision to pieces of tooling so they can do it in a shorter period of time. I think a year or year and a half is reasonable.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: Stu, we go back to winter testing in Daytona. What I found very unique about the testing this year, it was not three days of the team just making single‑car, two‑lap runs to see how fast they could run. I was down there for the final day of the first test. I was amazed how much drafting there was. Ricky Rudd, I watched him run with between his two cars almost 500 miles in that one day. Out of those six days of testing, absolutely, to my knowledge, or at least was talked about, zero tire problems. We get back down there, and the bottom falls out, you have to wonder what in the world is going on.

STU GRANT: Thanks for bringing that up (laughter).

LARRY McREYNOLDS: I’m going to say this. There’s not bad tires, we just do bad things to them.

STU GRANT: Again, in this case, it was a complicated situation that we had because, if I go back to the little review that we had in the media center on I guess it was Thursday morning, you know, we pulled a number of tires back right before the shootout. We thought we might have had an isolated issue that we were dealing with, so we pulled about 300 tires back. Then we experienced several other tread delaminations on Wednesday afternoon that were from other batches of our production run, as well. At that point we weren’t sure what we had.

Again, it’s a combination of what we are ‑‑ what we provide, manufacture, produce and provide, and what the teams do with them on the racetrack, obviously. So you try to have to sort through that just by gathering all the information you can.

From our side what we did was we flew a sampling of production throughout the entire Daytona build back to Akron on Wednesday night to try to analyze what exactly we were dealing with. What we found was there was a lower level of adhesion on our end between that at that point fabric ply and the tread. So we expanded that pull back to include about 900 tires.

If you look at the numbers, okay, so we had this group of 900 tires that certainly passed all testing that we did, but it was lower in value than some of the other batches that we had. So out of this 900 pool, we had a total of eight tires that we experienced issues with, right? We had 297 that we actually were able to pull back. The other 600 were run with no problems. So certainly we’re dealing with something that was an isolated issue.

Obviously, Thursday’s races went terrific. Friday’s races were fine. So was Saturday, and certainly Sunday. We were very happy. Everything was incident‑free. At this point, I mean, I am anticipating your next question on what have we found out? I don’t know the answer to that right now. We have a tremendous amount of people right now working on figuring out what was the cause of that low level of adhesion that we had.

The tire process is a complicated series of assembling components and materials and so on. I tell you this, I don’t know what the answer is, but we’re going to find out. I guarantee we will find out what the answer is so that won’t happen again.

Q. Jack, unleaded fuel. I know there was a lot of testing that went on back in ‘99, 2000. Where are we at with that? What would be undertaken from an engine‑building standpoint with leaded fuel?

JACK ROUSH: Lead, among other things, is a lubricant in the top end of the engine. You just need to go back and prove durability from the valve seat to the valve interface, which is one of the problems we had with production engines as we went completely away from lead in the fuel. It may be that we’ll have to change the seat material, maybe we have to change the valve material, which as long as we change it in all the engines doesn’t matter.

There’s a lubrication concern given the temperature of it in the interface between the piston’s top ring and the piston ring (inaudible). We won’t know if we have a problem there till you run some miles and see. If there is a problem, then there’s coating techniques for the aluminum ring (inaudible) and the rings that will allow us to overcome that.

As long as somebody doesn’t have fuel with lead that has higher octane capability or a higher lubricity capability for the top of the engine, it won’t matter. We reduced the lead a couple of times, three times, in production engines over the last ‑‑ since World War II. The highest lead, of course, in fuel for gasoline engines was in the airplanes in World War II. It would be a capital crime to bring it and burn it in the continental United States today.

It really doesn’t matter what we do. Sonoco will do a great job of blending something, and the teams also do just fine at adapting to it. It’s just a matter of when we bite the bullet and decide it’s time. There will be some hiccups. It will cost some money for the development and change in parts, but it’s definitely a doable deal.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: To follow back up on Stu’s last comment with the tire. I had the privilege in ‘99 or 2000 when I was still with Childress of going to Akron and going through the plant that makes a race tire. I walked away pretty much concluding two or three things. I never had any idea how much went into making a race tire. They were doing some durability tests that just happened to be on a right front tire at Dover, Delaware. The other thing I concluded, I never wanted my driver to go see that durability test. He would never drive off the corner at Dover ever again. It made me realize exactly why a race tire costs what it costs, because it’s quite than amazing, lengthy process.

Bob Wildberger, one thing I’ve noticed with Dodge this year is, of course, you guys came back in the Truck Series seven or eight years ago, spent two or three years there, in 2001 you opened up into NEXTEL Cup. Didn’t do a whole lot in the Busch Series. We know how much effort Chevrolet puts in the Busch Series. What I’m seeing this year, there’s a lot of Dodge involvement now going on in the Busch Series. Seems like more so this year than in the past two or three years.

BOB WILDBERGER: Yeah, the involvement is fundamentally from the efforts of our race teams as opposed to factory‑supported efforts, if you will. Obviously, whatever our Dodge race teams do, we try to give them the best support we possibly can.

I think you’re seeing now, as our Cup program is maturing, now you’re starting to see a Cup team expand more into Busch as well as other series. It’s part of their development efforts. It’s part of bringing their next drivers along. I think, again, what you’re seeing now is a maturity we’re starting to reach in the program, a maturity for both the factory and the teams. But it’s really the teams that are leading that charge.

LARRY McREYNOLDS: I think we’re going to have to conclude. Practice is fixing to start. Robin, Pat, Alba, Jack, Stu, thank you a whole lot.

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