Adapting to this track

• You want a good downforce car at Richmond, and you pretty much max out everything. You'll have the spoiler at 70 degrees and the front fenders out as wide as you can pull them. You need a fair amount of front-end opening, which takes away from your downforce, but for the most part, it's about the setup, including springs, shocks and sway bar. You want to run the car as soft as possible in the front so it grips getting into the corners and in the back to keep the rear wheels from spinning when you get on the throttle hard. Teams work with shock packages a lot.
• Brakes are important here, and though you want to have downforce, you still need good openings in the front of the car to cool the brakes.
• For the most part, Turns 1 and 2 are one-groove turns, but Turns 3 and 4 will have cars on the top of the track, bottom and middle. The track was repaved after the 2003 season.

Plotting strategy

• The mechanics of the car are important, but you really have to concentrate in practice on getting the car to handle well in the corners.
• Another key is to keep your emotions in check. If you spin and get to continue, you have to get your focus back, and everyone has to keep a level head.
• When you come to pit road, you should change four tires because they lose grip. If it's late in the race and there is a green-flag stop, you may just put on right-side tires to avoid losing track position.

Where the action is

• There's a lot of action off Turn 2 because it gets so tight there. A couple of drivers will shoot for the same hole, and something has to give. Sometimes drivers just lose it and loop it around. You may see a lot of cars tagging the wall coming out of Turn 4 because you are right up against the wall to head down the front stretch.
• To take a position from someone on the straightaways, you have to get down below the other car, beat it into the corner, outbrake it and get back in the throttle. You'll see a lot of passes this way, especially in Turn 1.