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JGR’s Cronquist Confident Team Won’t Face Engine Issues
Written by: SceneDaily.com
SceneDaily.com   
05/21/2008 - 05:16 PM
Charlotte, NC
 
Kyle Busch was a favorite to win last week in Charlotte, and he dominated until his engine gave out. (Photo: John Harrelson) ยป More Photos

All three Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas had engine trouble last weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, but the team’s head engine builder said the problem has been fixed.

Mark Cronquist attributed the failures – Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin blew up during the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, while Tony Stewart blew up in practice – to rocker arm problems.

“It was a new engine package for us,” Cronquist said. “Basically, we put together different engine packages, depending on what we’re going to be doing in the race. We knew this one wasn’t going to last. I personally thought it would last 350 miles, and it didn’t.

“Some guys at my shop kept trying to tell me to put the other stuff in there, and I kept saying, ‘You come to the all-star race to win everything.’ Even the engine guys look at this kind of race with a ‘checkers-or-wreckers’ kind of attitude, and the ‘checkers or wreckers’ kind of overruled me. We just tried too much.”

Cronquist said his engine department pinpointed what happened, though JGR isn’t likely to run the same engine package in this weekend’s Coca-Cola 600.

“Even if we want to try racing this package, we know we can fix that part,” Cornquist said. “That’s our weak link. We fix that, and we go to 450 miles. And whatever
breaks there, we fix that part and we go to 650 miles. Then, we’re racing this package. We’re not even backing off on it.

“That’s the good thing. The bad thing is that we blew up two motors – three actually when you count the one the No. 20 [of Stewart] had in practice. That kind of sucks, and in hindsight we probably should’ve tested a little bit more at the shop to really make sure it would go the distance in the all-star race, but we now know that we had a rocker-arm problem, and that’s something we can fix.”

Cronquist is confident in the team’s engines for Charlotte, even if there are an extra 100 miles Sunday night beyond the longest other races on the NASCAR Sprint Cup circuit.

“My stomach still gets really knotted up, but the good thing, and a lot of people don’t realize this, is that Darlington actually puts more cycles on the engine than Charlotte does,” Cronquist said. “We ran a lot of practice at Darlington. We had an extra practice there with the new asphalt. And actually, cycle-wise at Darlington, it was the same as the Coca-Cola 600 was last year with all of its practice sessions.

“We got a good look at all of our stuff after Darlington, and it all looked good. So we’re feeling pretty good about our chances going into the 600 at Charlotte.”
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