LONG POND, Pa. – This week’s two-day NASCAR Sprint Cup Series test sessions at Pocono Raceway may have had the look of a science experiment, but don’t be fooled, participants said.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, lap after lap meant discovery after discovery – all crucial for the June 8 debut of NASCAR’s new car in the Pocono 500.
“We’ve picked up some speed here before lunch, found a few things that made our car go a little faster,” said Greg Biffle (No. 16 3M Ford) during a Wednesday visit to the Pocono media center. “But still it’s a tough place, you know, to make the consistent laps or anything like that. It does one thing one lap, one thing the next.
“But we’re learning some. We definitely probably needed this test to get ourselves going a little bit better, catch up to the rest of the cars here.”
Pocono’s 2.5-mile triangular layout is one of the series’ most challenging – three distinct turns coupled with long straightaways. This year marks the first new-car events at tracks longer than 1.5-miles (teams ran the new car in 16 of 36 events last season), which underscores the importance of this week’s test.
“The key to winning at Pocono is to be really good in one turn, and to keep working on the other turns to get them as good as you can,” said NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Director John Darby.
After thunderstorms washed out the final hours of Tuesday’s session, Wednesday dawned sunny and clear, if unusually cool, and the combination of a fast track and good conditions offered immediate results for some teams.
Darby said those that struggled with splitter contact and negotiating some turns during Tuesday’s session may have found their answers overnight.
“The rain actually may have been a blessing in disguise because it gave all the engineers extra time to study the data,” he said, “and looking at times today, the whole garage has picked up speed.”
“It’s been good for us to test,” said Kasey Kahne (No. 9 Budweiser Dodge). “We made a long run today, a 16-lap run, and felt pretty good throughout the whole run. Just keep working on it, trying to figure things out – messing with brakes. Brakes can be pretty big here. So just kind of trying to hit on everything we can for these couple days.”
Martin Truex Jr. (No. 1 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet), said his team had hit on several things they liked, thanks to crew chief Kevin Manion’s detailed test plan.
“One of the things I like about this car is it seems like a driver and a crew chief can get in there and work on it a little bit more than they used to,” Truex said of the new car. “The old car, if your body wasn’t just right, you couldn’t run, no matter what springs and shocks you had in there. Now everybody’s got the same thing. It just seems like you can get in there and work on it a little bit more with the shocks and springs, mechanical stuff that we grew up doing. It seems like it’s more fun to work on.”
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