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Fuel Mileage, Fuel Mileage, Fuel Mileage
Jun 10th, 2011 by T.C.

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Love it or hate it, fuel strategy is going to continue being the name of the game over the next few weeks.  The last two Cup races and the most recent Nationwide Series race were all decided on late race fuel gambles, and the next three Cup races are all at tracks conducive to fuel mileage races.

Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, and Justin Allgaier all picked up the most recent wins because they were able to stretch their mileage just a little bit more than everyone else.  Their crews were able to squeeze every possible ounce of fuel into the cells during pit stops, and the crew chiefs and engineers burned up their calculators making sure they could make it to the end.

These races may not always be the most exciting to watch from the stands or on TV, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of drama anyway.  Those responsible for making the decisions and figuring fuel mileage are always holding their breath as the laps click away.  Adrenaline is flowing and there never seems to be enough Tums around.

The next three Cup races are at Pocono, Michigan, and Sonoma.  Pocono and Michigan are both big tracks that aren’t known for a ton of cautions.  The cars get spread out pretty quickly, and there is plenty of room to race.  That means we’ll see a lot of long green flag runs and situations like we’ve had at Charlotte and Kansas will happen again.  Teams running further back in the pack will gamble on track position and we could see more first time winners.

At Sonoma, everyone works their strategy from the finish of the race backwards.  The teams will figure out what the earliest lap is they can come in to pit and still make it to the finish, and work their strategy from there.  Track position is always a big key, and fuel mileage plays a big part.  Marcos Ambrose lost a chance to win at Sonoma last season because he could not get his car re-fired under caution after he’d been riding around with the engine off to conserve fuel.

We haven’t seen a ton of fuel mileage hate from the fans up to this point because we’ve had some exciting finishes.  But that doesn’t mean the hate won’t make an appearance over the coming days.  Just remember that sometimes the driver wheels a strong race car to the win, and sometimes clever strategy from those on the pit box rules the day.

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Do You Remember Gilligan’s Island?
Jun 15th, 2010 by T.C.

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Every track we go to has unique challenges on pit road.  At short tracks like Martinsville, the stalls are very small; Phoenix and Darlington have curved pit roads; Kentucky has the world’s thinnest pit wall; and at Watkins Glen we pit backwards.  Until only a few short years ago however, nobody had a pit road situation like Infineon Raceway.

Before 2002, Infineon Raceway (then Sears Point Raceway) actually had two pit roads.  As it is today, the entrance for the main pit road was entered on driver’s left as they came down the straight before turn 11.  This pit road however, only had 34 pit stalls.  The remaining drivers who qualified in positions 35-43 had to pit on what was referred to as “Gilligan’s Island.”  This smaller pit road was on driver’s right as they exited turn 11. 

I found a video on YouTube from the 1998 Savemart 350 at Sears Point that shows a great view of the Island.  Scroll ahead to the 6:53 mark, and you will see Robert Pressley make an unscheduled stop for a flat tire.  As you can see, on “Gilligan’s Island,” teams had to do pit stops backwards.  On top of that, since the stretch was so much shorter, NASCAR would actually hold teams in their stalls for as many as 15 seconds after their stop was completed, before they would allow them to leave.  This, in NASCAR’s view, equalized any advantage a team would gain by using the much shorter pit road.

Besides creating unique pit stop situations, the Island offered up other problems.  First, being out there meant teams were really on an island.  Once the race started, there was no way to get back across the track.  This required teams to have any spare pieces in their stalls that they may need in case of a crash or other problem.  There would be no running back to the hauler for that spare battery.

Also, if a team did happen to crash out or blow an engine, they had to stay on “Gilligan’s Island” until the race was complete.  There would have been no early exit for you start-and-parkers either!

Thankfully, along with many other improvements, the track was reconfigured in 2002 to allow for all 43 cars to have space on pit road.  The Island was thus gone forever, and that area inside the hairpin at turn 11 was turned into runoff.

Who’s ready for some road course racing?!



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