Every team is a home team during All Star Week
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Can you dig it?
You know, Lowe's Motor Speedway is the home turf, the home field for 75 to 80 percent of the NASCAR Sprint Cup teams. The thing I always enjoyed about racing for these next two weeks in Charlotte is yes, you get to lie in your own bed at night and not in some hotel room someplace. But the bigger thing is that the whole team gets a chance to be part of the race weekends here.
I am talking about the guys in the shop. The guys who never get to go to the race track. Now for the next couple weeks they get a chance to get to the track and watch their "product" go around the race track and race. Team members also get to bring their wives, kids, girlfriends, moms and dads to the track. It is just a neat thing for all of them.
The one thing I really like is that Sprint and NASCAR have worked together to stretch the festivities out to make it an All Star week. It used to just be a two-day show. Now it starts Thursday night with the Pit Crew Competition. It's the one night that it's all about the pit crews and the guys that go over the wall. These are the guys that can make a huge difference in who might win or lose a race. It is their night to shine.
It's similar to what the NBA does with the Slam Dunk competition and the 3-point competition. Now for the first time, there is a Burn Out competition. I think it's cool. It's just another fun thing to put into the mix to give the fans a neat experience. For a brief moment, who is leading the points, who is in the top 35 or who is in the Chase simply doesn't matter. That's not what this week is about. The irony in all this is that this weekend we have one of the shortest races of the year and next week for the Coca Cola 600 we have the longest race of the year.
I mentioned earlier about guys and girls back in the shop being able to come to the track. The other neat thing was when we were able to win the event. These same people got to go to Victory Lane and get their picture made. That's just special.
We had a special deal where some of us from Speed thought we were going to cover a media event for the Pit Crew competition, when we actually were participating in the media pit crew competition. There was myself, Rick Allen from the Truck Series broadcast team, Randy Pemberton who does a lot of reporting for Speed and we brought Krista Voda in as one of our tire changers.
In the individual competition, we didn't shine too bright. I ended up leading as the gasman for a long period of time until I got beat there near the end. But I am proud to say that we finished a very close second in the team competition out of 11 teams. When all penalties were figured in, we even went head to head with the #12 Alltel team that won the competition last year and we beat them. So I am very proud of our little Speed team! Sure we might have looked like a bunch of misfits out there, but when it was all said and done, it wasn't too bad of a day for us!
Poor Krista though. She kind of struggled. I have never seen lug nuts throw sparks like that. But we had fun and it was all about the team. As we always say, there is no "I" in team and that's what it was all about.
When you look at the Showdown race Saturday night, it's all about finishing first or second. That's all that matters. Normally when you finish third, you've had a great night. But Saturday night if you finish third you just pack up and go home like everyone else. It's only about finishing first or second because it allows you to transfer to the All Star race. Now there is yet another chance to make the All Star race and that's if the fans voted their favorite driver in.
Then when you look at the All Star race, it has a minor change. They have stretched it out this year. Last year it was four 20-lap segments, but this year it is four 25-lap segments. They will run 25 laps and throw a caution. You have the option of pitting or staying out. You can change two tires, four tires, or whatever you want to do. I tend to believe that everyone will pit. I will also be willing to bet that most everyone will change four tires but there may be some that just take two tires.
Unlike every points race we run, restarts in the All Star race are double file restarts. It is strictly double file by how you were running when the caution was displayed. We then run 25 more laps and then we have half-time -- which is something we never have in our sport. So the caution will wave for 10 minutes and you can come to pit road and make adjustments to your cars. It's almost like halftime of a football game.
Then we go at it again for 25 more laps. Then, that's where it gets interesting. At lap 75 they will throw a caution and everyone has to pit. You can do a stop and go if you want but everyone has to hit pit road. I tend to believe there may be two or three cars that will try that. There may be some guys that roll the dice and change right side tires only.
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| Charlotte-area teams like Robbie Gordon's who rarely leave the shop get a chance to participate at the track during All Star Week. (Rusty Jarrett / Getty Images) |
Then it becomes 25 green flag laps of racing. And just like in any other sport with the clock winding down, the intensity definitely picks up in the race. Even more so for that pit crew and that crew chief in the decisions they make for that last caution flag stop.
The one thing I like about the All Star week is that it shines the light on the entire team. It involves everybody. We know the drivers are the stars but there are others that can win or lose a race and this is their chance to shine. We all know week in and week out that it's a team sport, but it probably doesn't get advertised as much as it should. It seems most weeks the driver gets all the glory.
And let's not lose sight of the Big Picture Saturday night. Sure, if you finish second, third or fourth in the All Star race that there is a fair amount of money, but it's all about winning and winning pays one MILLION dollars. I couldn't tell you who finished second last year if you held a gun to my head. Why? Well because nobody cares. This race Saturday night is all about winning. From second on back doesn't matter.
Taking a look back, I think we had a great race last weekend at Darlington. I think it was a race that kind of caught us all off guard. After watching Thursday and Friday's practices, we were all concerned about what the race would bring us. But we ended up with a great race last Saturday night. We had 30-some lead changes among 15 drivers. More importantly we only had eight cautions for only 31 laps. It was like Darlington went back and found itself. I can't wait to go back to Darlington in a year from now. I wish we were going back to Darlington this fall. I think the racing will get even better once its new surface gets a few races under its belt. Darlington in no form or fashion let us down.
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