Gettin’ Loose in Loudon’s Turn Three Could Hurt

---

Copyright © 2008 Bench Racing Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
If you are not reading this article in a news reader, the website you are viewing it on is guilty of copyright infringement.
Please report this site through the contact link on OnPitRow.com.
(digital signature: 0cfdbe0a46fcc45c1d0ce390e8adfabc)

---

New Hampshire International Speedway always makes me nervous.   This year, maybe more so than ever.  The track has seen more than its share of carnage through its history.  Loudon may have been the track that most needed the soft-wall technology of the Safer barriers.   With long straights and sharp, relatively flat corners, the New Hampshire miler will be especially tough on drivers for teams that don’t have the New Car’s special handling requirements figured out.  Missing the set-up could hurt.

The Loose in Turn Three experiment continues this week with Do You NASCAR, Bruce’s NASCAR Bits and Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie each fielding a topic to chew on.  Here’s the Bench Racing hor dourve of the week….

After what we saw at Infineon Raceway, is there still a place for “road-course ringers” in the Cup Series?

Charlie:  If you run a top tier Cup team, your drivers better be able to at least hold their own on the road courses. Your best teams need drivers that can do it all. The ability of most of the regular Sprint Cup drivers to handle the road courses has improved so much that it would take the perfect storm of circumstances to have a non-regular win ANY Cup race.  Only if you have a team that is on the edge of top thirty five contention - or is out of the top thirty five all together - would trying to catch a specialist’s lightning in a bottle be worth disrupting your group’s chemistry.

Bruce:  No.  Only if you’re a 30th and worse team with driver proven to be inefficient on road courses would you even think about it.  Any time a team brings a ringer in, it’s a slap in the face to the regular driver, even if he appears on board, you’re killing his opportunity to accrue valuable driver points.  Everyone either has the talent, or can be taught the skills, if the team really wants to invest in their driver.
 
TZ: Of course any team that’s on the bubble for the top-35 in owner points should consider using specialists at courses like Infineon or Watkins Glen. But, to throw a wrench in your guys’ theory that it’s reserved ONLY for those teams, what about teams like the no. 8 DEI car? You’re already limiting his Cup experience to a measley 8 races this year, so there’s no real logic in making sure that he gets in there at the road courses. Then, there’s also occassions when that teams are well within the top-35, yet have no real loyalty in a multi-year sense to their driver … guys like a Dave Blaney. In this instance, lingering After what we saw at Infineon Raceway, is there still a place for “road
course ringers” in the Cup Series?

That’s what we think.  How ’bout you?  Leave your feedback in the comments section.  After doing that, head over to DoYouNASCAR.com for TZ’s topic for the week…..

After a lackluster 2007 season, can the no. 16 team keep it together long enough through the next 10 races to keep Greg Biffle in Chase contention?

Then check out Bruce’s Bits for this one…
 
Should NASCAR and Sunoco make a concerted effort to convert the sport over to a less fossil fuel centric sport?

Photo credit:  BethAnne Heisler - ON PIT ROW