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NASCAR Nationwide Series
NNS: Braun Showing Improvement
Colin Braun has had an erratic rookie season...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted July 15, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Colin Braun (Right) talks with team co-owner Jack Roush (Left) earlier this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
It’s safe to say that Colin Braun’s rookie season in the NASCAR Nationwide Series wasn’t what either he or team co-owner Jack Roush was looking for. But at least now it’s trending in the right direction.

Five of Braun’s first eight races this year ended with crashes that resulted in DNFs. That earned Braun a seat on the bench, as he went to work in the Roush Fenway Racing body shop, while Matt Kenseth and Brian Ickler each ran two races in the No. 16 Con-Way Freight Ford.

But the benching evidently did some good: In his most recent five starts, Braun finished 12th or better four times, and would have had a top-10 at Chicagoland Speedway last Friday had he not been caught in a last-lap crash not of his own making.

The addition of veteran crew chief Ricky Viers last month certainly helped Braun, as has some additional seat time. While he still has a long way to go, he clearly is on the right track heading into the 1.25-mile Gateway International Raceway, site of Saturday night’s Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250.

“I feel really good,” said Braun. “Gateway has been a pretty good track for me. I’ve been fast there. I certainly had a quick vehicle last year, qualifying on the pole and ran well, but I got caught up in a wreck there near the end of the race on a green-white-checkered and it cost us a decent finish, but I felt like we were going to have a really good night.”

Braun said that Gateway is a challenging place for drivers and crew chiefs because of the nature of the two ends of the oval track.

“Gateway is one of the most unique race tracks we go to because both ends of the race track are different,” Braun said. “You’ve got Turns 1 and 2 which are really tight and (Turns) 3 and 4, which are really flat and sweeping and a lot more open. It’s a pretty big challenge to get your car driving well on both ends of the race track. It seems like if you get it driving well in 1 and 2 you’re too loose in 3 and 4. If you get it good in 3 and 4 you’re too tight in 1 and 2. You really have to balance that and try to work around it.”
Colin Braun is searching for a new ride. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

And Braun has been pretty good about finding that compromise.

“The last couple of years in the Truck Series I’ve had to sacrifice a little bit on 3 and 4 just to make sure I’m good through 1 and 2," he said. "As a driver you can do a lot more through 3 and 4 to get your car or truck to kind of get through there and drive decent, but 1 and 2 you really have to have your car working well.”

But the main thing for Braun right now is he’s just happy to be back in the car at a time when the schedule is busy.

“For me, being a rookie in this series, having more back-to-back race weekends is nice,” he said. “It gives you the chance to get some momentum going and think about what you did right and wrong the weekend before and work on it that very next weekend. When you start to have those big breaks it seems to disrupt your momentum and your flow a little bit.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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