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Sprint Cup
CUP: Cars Can Drive Teams Batty
Kyle Busch is seventh in the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings...
Kyle Busch has only one car that runs completely to his liking. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Kyle Busch is unhappy, and with good reason.
After a sensational midseason run that saw him win twice and score five top-fives in eight races, Busch has gone stone cold, with his best finishes in the last eight races being a pair of eighth-place runs at Indianapolis and Watkins Glen.
The problem, said Busch, is simple: In his fleet of Toyotas at Joe Gibbs Racing, he has one fast chassis, the one that carries serial number 251. According to Busch, No. 251 is considerably faster than any of the dozen or so cars that the team rotates through its fleet over the course of the season. No. 251 was built by the same JGR team members to the same specs as all his other cars. Busch said it feels exactly the same and drives the same as all his other cars. It’s just a lot faster.
“The way you can tell is when you get out of the car after the first run, you look at the speed charts and you’re like, ‘OK, we’re top-five or we’re fifth through 10th or something like that, this must be 251,’” said Busch. “Any other time I get in the car, it’s like, 20th to 30th and I’m like, ‘Well, we’re in a P.O.S. today, let’s see what we can fix.’”
And with the Chase for the Sprint Cup approaching, Busch isn’t pleased to have just one fast car available to him. “We have one in the stables and that’s it,” he said. “We can’t go into a 10-race stretch with only one bullet in the chamber so we’re trying to find some more cars that we know will be fast.”
Busch’s older brother Kurt understands. “We got into the Chase in 2004, we had this car, it was great," said Kurt Busch. “We had to turn it around and bring it to every race because that is your best piece and you have to go up with your best equipment to win the Chase. It happens. It’s weird. It’s a phenomenon. It’s hard to explain. I’ve been in it now, 10, 11 years and you do find that one chassis that seems to do everything better than the rest.”
Prior to the introduction of the current generation NASCAR Sprint Cup car in 2007, teams could build cars with all manner of variables, including moving the location of the body on the frame, the position of the frame rails and even to some degree the shape of the body. The new car, however, requires much more standardization and, in theory, equalization of cars. They should all be pretty much the same. In the real world, it hasn’t always worked out that way.
“Ever since I drove race cars, you'll build new cars that just aren't good and have old cars that are favorites and that have always done good and you always like driving them,” said Dale Earnhardt Jr.. “As a driver, Kyle probably pays more attention to it than I do, about the serial numbers and which cars go where and all that stuff, but back when it was a little bit smaller, you had car No. 5 and car No. 8 and car No. 7 and you knew which ones were good and which ones weren't and you had different colors and interiors and stuff to help you keep track of them.”
Earnhardt said it’s impossible to make every car identical, no matter how close the tolerances are.
“You build cars on the same jig and some of them the driver just like them better,” Earnhardt said. “There's little nuances. There's one thing I'm not sure can ever be perfectly replicated and that's how the body is hung. Maybe that's where it is. I feel like most of the new cars that we put together, we hit it on four out of five cars that it's going to be a good car and it's a car I like. In the last six or seven years it's become more rare that you build a brand new car that you just don't like at all.”
After a sensational midseason run that saw him win twice and score five top-fives in eight races, Busch has gone stone cold, with his best finishes in the last eight races being a pair of eighth-place runs at Indianapolis and Watkins Glen.
The problem, said Busch, is simple: In his fleet of Toyotas at Joe Gibbs Racing, he has one fast chassis, the one that carries serial number 251. According to Busch, No. 251 is considerably faster than any of the dozen or so cars that the team rotates through its fleet over the course of the season. No. 251 was built by the same JGR team members to the same specs as all his other cars. Busch said it feels exactly the same and drives the same as all his other cars. It’s just a lot faster.
“The way you can tell is when you get out of the car after the first run, you look at the speed charts and you’re like, ‘OK, we’re top-five or we’re fifth through 10th or something like that, this must be 251,’” said Busch. “Any other time I get in the car, it’s like, 20th to 30th and I’m like, ‘Well, we’re in a P.O.S. today, let’s see what we can fix.’”
And with the Chase for the Sprint Cup approaching, Busch isn’t pleased to have just one fast car available to him. “We have one in the stables and that’s it,” he said. “We can’t go into a 10-race stretch with only one bullet in the chamber so we’re trying to find some more cars that we know will be fast.”
Busch’s older brother Kurt understands. “We got into the Chase in 2004, we had this car, it was great," said Kurt Busch. “We had to turn it around and bring it to every race because that is your best piece and you have to go up with your best equipment to win the Chase. It happens. It’s weird. It’s a phenomenon. It’s hard to explain. I’ve been in it now, 10, 11 years and you do find that one chassis that seems to do everything better than the rest.”
Prior to the introduction of the current generation NASCAR Sprint Cup car in 2007, teams could build cars with all manner of variables, including moving the location of the body on the frame, the position of the frame rails and even to some degree the shape of the body. The new car, however, requires much more standardization and, in theory, equalization of cars. They should all be pretty much the same. In the real world, it hasn’t always worked out that way.
“Ever since I drove race cars, you'll build new cars that just aren't good and have old cars that are favorites and that have always done good and you always like driving them,” said Dale Earnhardt Jr.. “As a driver, Kyle probably pays more attention to it than I do, about the serial numbers and which cars go where and all that stuff, but back when it was a little bit smaller, you had car No. 5 and car No. 8 and car No. 7 and you knew which ones were good and which ones weren't and you had different colors and interiors and stuff to help you keep track of them.”
Earnhardt said it’s impossible to make every car identical, no matter how close the tolerances are.
“You build cars on the same jig and some of them the driver just like them better,” Earnhardt said. “There's little nuances. There's one thing I'm not sure can ever be perfectly replicated and that's how the body is hung. Maybe that's where it is. I feel like most of the new cars that we put together, we hit it on four out of five cars that it's going to be a good car and it's a car I like. In the last six or seven years it's become more rare that you build a brand new car that you just don't like at all.”
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