Former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya won the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at the Infineon Raceway last year by making a call on the fuel and stayed far ahead of Tony Stewart, enough to claim the chequered flag. The same scenario might well play out again this year and Montoya’s crew chief, Brian Pattie, is quite familiar with the format, having been a road-racing rep himself. “I wasn’t there last year in Sonoma, and obviously Juan won,” Pattie said. “He had to start in the back, didn’t qualify all that great. They were decent in practice and they had a top-five car. The cautions fell appropriately so they could take the gamble on fuel and it paid out. We’ll see what happens.”
Pattie was on the pit crew when Ron Fellows nearly won a NASCAR road race at Watkins Glen, driving a Nationwide Series car out of Joe Nemechek’s shop, so he knows what it’s all about.
“I’ve been fortunate to work with Ron Fellows, Scott Pruett and Juan, and they are some of the elite racers in the industry, but I love road racing,” Pattie said. “The people who know me know that I would rather watch road racing than any other type of racing. Last week at Michigan, the 24 Hours of Le Mans was on. I love road racing, Formula One, ALMS, the Grand-Am series is awesome.”
“It’s a balance between mechanical grip… it’s not all about aero like it would be on a mile-and-a-half track, and it’s not all about mechanical like it is at Martinsville. It’s like a combination of everything, trying to mold and put all the pieces of the puzzle together. It’s a lot of fun to me trying to figure it out, and obviously, when you put a great road racer in the seat and the car is handling well, then you’re probably going to have a good day. I’ve been fortunate over the years, yes, but people don’t understand how much we tested to get ready for these races.”
“Back when we were winning with Fellows in the Nationwide and Truck series, and we ran second in our first Cup race out of a Busch shop, basically… there was so much preparation and so much time. Nowadays, that’s what you have to do every week, so we’ll see. We’ll see what happens at Sonoma.”
Setting up the car for the Sonoma track is no easy task. The 1.99 mile long circuit requires a lot of testing, set-up changes, tearing down and then the whole process is repeated over and over again till the team gets it right. “We shook our car down to make sure our brake package was right,” Pattie said. “But with the new car, you’re limited in what you can do. You’re just trying to get the most mechanical grip, make sure it’s stable under braking. You have to be able to pass under braking. You have to make sure your fuel cell is right and you get good mileage, because it seems like most of the time these races are won on fuel mileage, not the fastest car. There are a lot of different areas we want to make sure we have right before we even get to Sonoma.”
Brakes will be important too and even though they are not as important as they would be on a shorter and faster track, they will be crucial.”The brake zones aren’t as long as they are at Watkins Glen, and the speeds aren’t as great,” he said. “It’s not as crucial, but anywhere you have to overtake someone under braking, brakes obviously have something to do with it.
“The interior of the car, where the pedals are located, whether the driver is a heel-and-toe, left-foot braker - all that stuff kind of twines together. These cars are more fitted to the driver and his driving style than our oval-track cars are.”
Other than that, it’s about momentum and, as Pattie says, keeping the driver happy and cool.
“We just make sure that the car handles well and the driver doesn’t get worn out,” he said. “These cars don’t drive like the old cars did. They’re a bit more of a handful, a little bit hotter inside, but it’s the nature of the beast. We worked hard on insulating, making sure our driver stays cool for this race. If your driver falls out of the seat the last 10 laps, it’s not going to help you any. We took some precaution to make sure he’s comfortable, not too hot, and fresh for the last 10 laps, because that’s when these races are typically won. We paid attention to all the details over the last four weeks.”
NASCAR, with it’s new car, were aiming to make it tough for the crew to make the car perform according to their whims and fancies. And to a large extent, they have succeeded.
“Not a lot,” Pattie said about making changes on the car. “They tell us where to put the oil tanks, where to put the batteries. The cars don’t take a lot of lead to begin with, so when you put the big brake package on it, we try to build the car as light as we can so we have some ballast to move around in the frame rails, left side and right side, and still keep our nose-to-tail where we want it. It’s a struggle. The box is a little bit smaller to work in.”
“We’ve been on the pull-down rig for a couple of days, and we took the car to the seven-post after the test just to try to get more information and more mechanical grip without losing aero balance and still be stable on our brakes - there’s just so many pieces.”
The only piece in this puzzle that can be completely controlled is the strategy and that was solid even before the team left for Sonoma. “We have a game plan now to when we’re going to pit and how many laps we have to go on fuel.” Pattie said. “We’ll make a couple of race runs and switch over to make sure we qualify well. Then we have Saturday’s practice to make sure we have the car right in race trim.
“Good road racers know the balance they need for a long run, a full stint, and your car is going to have to be pretty good. You almost run the race backwards. As soon as you can pit, you pit. That’s normal. I guess that started when Brett Bodine won at Watkins Glen. He ran the race backward and won the race and it opened everybody’s eyes to doing so.”
It has been a trademark of oval racing that the car that has the best tyres has, more often than not, won the race. According to Pattie, the Infineon is not so different.”This car here, track position is everything, but having 10-lap fresher tires might make a difference. Last year, I know Tony Stewart was awful fast, pitted later than Juan did and came back through the field pretty good, and Kyle Busch pitted late in the race at Mexico and came back to win against a guy that played the strategy by pitting early. It’s just how the cautions fall. If you pit early and a guy gets new tires 10 laps later and the cautions keep catching up, the guy with new tires is going to win the race.”