iNSIDE SCOOP: Trying Test

Things to do in Vegas before you race includes testing, especially with the new aero rules NASCAR drew up to enhance competition on 1.5-mile ovals, which happens to be what Las Vegas Motor Speedway measures.

The Cup teams spent four hours running around the desert layout, and there were various levels of relief, panic and plain old knuckle-busting worry.

Greg Biffle was more in the panic/disgusted mode.

“I’m willing to talk about anything but today’s test, so any questions that you guys have I’d be more than happy to answer, but it was a pretty tough day for us," he said.

Biffle drives for Jack Roush, whose team has flat owned LVMS since it first came on line. Roush Fords have been other-worldly on such tracks from the time he entered the sport.

Not so, at least not now.

“Last year I was the fastest on Thursday, probably the third-fastest on Friday, 12th on Saturday and I was 25th on Sunday,” Biffle said. “This year I’m 34th on Thursday, and hoping that I’m about 20th [Friday] and maybe 12th Saturday and win on Sunday, but that’s about as good of an analogy I can give you on what is wrong and why our fastest car is 27th. 

“I really honestly wish I had more to tell you about it, but we just aren’t getting a hold of the race track is about the best I can say.”

Win some, lose some, some get rained out.

Jimmie Johnson, who knows how to win at Vegas, talked about how the new rules, specifically the zero ride-height rule, can send you down a path to perdition.

“The one thing that we have found right now with the ride heights like they are and the options you can run for springs,” he said. “You can make a change to a spring in the car and affect your ride heights and completely change the way the geometry works in the car.  As you look at it initially you think, ‘OK, this will free the car up,’ you send it onto the race track, you come back you are plowing tight.  

“It’s like, ‘wait a second, what is going on?’  You have to look three or four layers deeper to understand the way everything works together and they are like, ‘oh,  I see, it changed ride heights, which changed this, now I see why the car is tight.’  So there are more steps involved with making a decision now.  I feel like the thought process on the pit box is more important than it’s ever been because a simple change affects more things now.”

Kevin Harvick, who won at Phoenix and ended up winning the test session, if such a thing is possible, said the work-up to top speed was important.

“I think the best thing that happened today is the car didn’t run very fast at the beginning of the practice,” he said. “We were three or four tenths off and had to kind of abort on what we were doing and go a different route.  The next route was not as good and the third route finally wound up being good.  I think those are good things that are, for us, important because it gives us direction when we go to other 1.5-mile tracks so we don’t have to do like we did today.  We can get to what has been working for us and just go straight from there to progress that package to make it even better.  I thought that was probably the best thing that came out of today.”

The fact that he was the class of the field at PIR wasn’t a benefit, Harvick said. In fact, he rather liked the fact they had to work up to it.

“We ran really well last week and coming here and running really well right out of the box probably wouldn’t have been the best thing in the world just for the fact that it’s good for those guys to know that sometimes you’ve got to keep working at it,” he said. “It’s good for all of us to have to work at it and communicate and do things that you are going to have to do throughout the year to overcome things.  That was good.  I would rather of had us struggle at the beginning of the day and have to work through things and communicate well with each other.  Just nobody gets wound up and everybody just gives the information and they are good at inputting all the information and trying different things.  Today was a good example of that.” 

What Sunday’s race will hold is anybody’s guess. My own is, they’ll figure it out and find a way to go fast. The racing will be decent, though there will be some who didn’t quite get the memo on how the new bits work.

At the end of the day, it’ll be Harvick, Johnson and Matt Kenseth around the front.