CUP: Furniture Row Gets Cars As Part Of RCR Deal

Sprint Cup

CUP: Furniture Row Gets Cars As Part Of RCR Deal

Furniture Row Racing is now getting race cars built by Richard Childress Racing...

Bob Pockrass | http://www.scenedaily.com | Posted March 04, 2010 Charlotte, NC

Furniture Row Racing driver Regan Smith is expected to benefit from his team's alliance with Richard Childress Racing. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Furniture Row Racing’s technical relationship with Richard Childress Racing is more than just having use of the No. 07 owner points for the first five races of the 2010 season.

Furniture Row now is getting cars built by RCR and also has access to RCR data. The technical alliance is similar to the Stewart-Haas relationship with Hendrick Motorsports, but Furniture Row still has a contract through the end of this year to lease engines from Hendrick.

“A lot of the initial part of working together is literally learning how to work together and how we’re going to do that,” Furniture Row general manager Joe Garone said. “That’s what we’re going through right now.”

In the past, Furniture Row has gotten chassis from Laughlin Racing Products/Ortec Racing and still has a contract with the company for a few more cars. Garone said that the move to RCR will allow Furniture Row to have a little more control over the chassis as well as the access to RCR’s information.

“For us, as a single-car team, some of the tools that it takes with simulation programs and chassis measurement and having control of your tolerances for your modeling simulation is very difficult when you’re not building your own chassis,” Garone said.

“Being on their chassis gets us on the same page, and it also gives them another person that’s on their chassis that is sharing information back to them through all the different facets of testing and simulation.”

By obtaining the points that locked it into the first five races, the team and driver Regan Smith have been able to focus on racing. After three events, Smith is 25th in the standings.

“Our performance has picked up,” Garone said. “It is completely different for us not to have to worry about qualifying. We’re learning how to run the [Friday] practices in race trim and at the end of the practices, switch over to qualifying. We’ve actually had pretty good results.

“We’re really excited with how the future looks.”

The team will continue to use its own pit crew. The Furniture Row pit crew is the same pit crew that does Kevin Harvick Inc.’s Nationwide Series car.

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