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2013 NASCAR PREVIEW
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
2013 SCHEDULE Feb. 21.................Duel 1 & 2 Feb. 24....................Daytona Mar. 3......................Phoenix Mar. 10................Las Vegas Mar. 17.......................Bristol Mar. 24.................................? April 7..............Martinsville April 13........................Texas April 21.....................Kansas April 27................Richmond May 5...................Talladega May 11...............Darlington May 18............All Star Race May 26..................Charlotte June 2..........................Dover June 9.......................Pocono June 16..................Michigan June 23....................Sonoma June 29..................Kentucky July 6.......................Daytona
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2013 NASCAR PREVIEW
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
Winning mattered to Herb Thomas
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Take it from the King. Herb Thomas stood tall in an era when the stock in stock car truly defined what NASCAR’s pioneers raced. “He was as good as they come,” said Richard Petty. “There have been ver y few guys who had more confidence in what he could do than Herb. He was so strongminded that he ‘willed’ his wins and what he was doing on the track.
champion. He captured premier series titles in 1951 and 1953 and finished second in two other seasons including 1954, Lee Petty’s first of three championship years. Thomas, who died in 2000 at the age of 77, won 48 races between 1951 and 1956 – establishing a record winning percentage of 21.05 percent over a 228-race career. He ranks 13th among all-time NASCAR premier series winners. Thomas won three of the first six Southern 500s at Darlington Raceway.
“He was going to beat the guys on the track no matter what was going on. That was his mind set.”
“It’s win or bust,” Thomas once said. “Second place is never good enough.”
High praise indeed from a driver whose father, Lee, battled door to door with Thomas and traded NASCAR championships with him. Both Pettys, father and son, are members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Thomas is due to be inducted into the hall on Friday, Feb. 8, along with fellow NASCAR premier series champions Buck Baker and Rusty Wallace; championship owner Cotton Owens and innovative crew chief, mechanic and engine builder Leonard Wood.
Thomas caught the racing bug in 1947 when he attended a modified race in Greensboro, N.C., with a group of friends. He bought one shortly thereafter but never had much success with the car. Thomas’ son, Victor Herbert Thomas, guessed that his father honed his driving skills behind the wheel of a dump truck hauling dirt over winding back roads to Ft. Bragg, N.C., during World War II.
Thomas, born into a farming family in Olivia, N.C. not far from where North Carolina Motor Speedway would be built, was NASCAR’s first two-time
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2-2-2-2 Winning Races Only Thing That Mattered To Herb Thomas Although he won in a variety of cars, Thomas forever will be remembered as the driver of the No. 92 Fabulous Hudson Hornet powered by engines built by Smokey Yunick, owner of the self-proclaimed “Best Damn Garage” in Daytona Beach, Fla. Thomas, who had won races earlier in the season driving a Plymouth and an Oldsmobile, switched to a factory-supported Hudson Motor Car Co. effort in mid-1951. The Hornet featured a high-torque inline six cylinder engine and – according to Thomas – a low center of gravity which gave the car a performance edge.
ished second to Tim Flock, who also drove a Hudson. Thomas won 12 times in both 1953 and 1954 as he and Lee Petty swapped championships. By 1955 Hudson’s factory presence was gone and Thomas switched to Chevrolets and Buicks. He crashed in May’s race at Charlotte Speedway, a 0.750-mile dirt track suffering injuries that sidelined Thomas through most of the summer. Yet Thomas returned to win the Southern 500 for the third time and finished fifth in points despite missing 19 races. The 1956 season was Thomas’ last as a full-time competitor. He won five times including three consecutive victories in Portland, Ore., Eureka, Calif. and Merced, Calif. at the wheel of Carl Kiekhafer’s No. 300B Chrysler 300. His crew chief was current NASCAR Hall of Fame nominee Ray Fox.
The biggest edge, however, appeared to be the driver himself.
Thomas raced three more times in 1957 and 1962 before retiring for good. "I used to pass everyone in the turns. Now they pass me in the turns. It's time to hang it up,” he said. “There’s no use running if you can’t be first.”
“The tracks were rough, dusty and weren’t hard-packed (clay). You had to learn to drive around the holes,” said Hershel McGriff, who competed against Thomas in 1954 and won five races driving an Oldsmobile for Frank Christian. “He was real competitive.” Baker frequently was quoted as saying: “The one guy you have to beat is Herb Thomas.” Thomas won seven times in 1951 – five of the victories in his Hudson – and won the championship by a comfortable margin over Fonty Flock and became NASCAR’s first driver/owner titleholder. He posted eight wins a year later but fin-
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Thomas’ son, Victor, recalls his father as being quiet and never one to brag about his accomplishments. “He always respected others and wasn’t a talker but if he said something, it would be the truth,” he said. “He never thought of himself as being a NASCAR champion. He was just a regular guy; a humble man.”
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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
Leonard Wood inducted this year DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Back in the day, there was no such thing as a “how-to” manual for chief mechanics. Or for race car builders, engine assemblers and tuners and anyone else associated with the then-fledgling sport of NASCAR stock car racing.
of the smartest people to come through this sport, especially early on. They had so many ideas from the pit crew to other things that people don’t even know about, under the hood so to speak, that Leonard Wood was kind of in charge of making it happen.” Leonard Wood Could Do Anything With A Race Car
The sport’s pioneers – in a way – made it up as they went along, some better than others. And one who did it among the best is Stuart, Va.’s Leonard Wood, who is among the 2013 class of five set for induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday, Feb. 8. Wood, 78, will be enshrined in ceremonies to be held at the Charlotte (N.C.) Convention Center Crown Ballroom which is connected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Wood joins his older brother Glen Wood, the fabled Wood Brothers No. 21 racing team’s original driver and owner, as a NASCAR Hall of Fame member. His fellow inductees in the Hall’s fourth class are NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champions Buck Baker, Herb Thomas and Rusty Wallace and car owner/builder/driver/crew chief Cotton Owens. “He’s the most dedicated, talented all-around mechanic NASCAR has ever seen,” said Wood’s nephew, Len, co-owner of the current Wood Brothers team with his brother Eddie and sister Kim Hall. “He fit the term ‘chief mechanic.’ He could do anything with the car.” The facts are these: Leonard Wood, in 990 races as a crew chief for the No. 21 Ford and Mercury cars, won 96 times. His cars also won 117 poles. After Glen stepped out of the cockpit, Leonard worked with some of the sport’s greatest drivers including NASCAR Hall of Famers David Pearson and Cale Yarborough; A.J. Foyt, Dan Gurney and Parnelli Jones. In a recent interview, Dale Jarrett, former Wood Brothers driver and current ESPN analyst, called Leonard Wood “one
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None of it came from a professor’s lecture, a text book or a blueprint. Wood learned by watching, thinking through the problem and then doing. And most assuredly innovating. He sat by as his father, Walter, tore down the engine from the team’s first race car. Later, when the time had come to freshen it again, Wood – then in high school – volunteered for the task, which was done to perfection. “It kind of blows your mind that somebody that young could do that,” said Glen Wood, noting that in the early days the chief mechanic was exactly that – a jack of all trades from fabricator to shock and spring specialist to engine builder. “He just learned by himself and he did it really well – anything he did. I could always depend on him. If the car wasn’t working right, I’d go off somewhere and sit while he worked on it. When I came back, it would be in winning shape. “He’s one of the best who ever came down the pike. I felt maybe he should have gone in (the NASCAR Hall of Fame) before me.” Pit stops weren’t a big part of NASCAR’s early years during which many races were held on 1/2-mile dirt tracks at distances of 200 and 250 laps. But the advent of longer races on superspeedways – Darlington Raceway followed by Daytona, Charlotte and Atlanta – significantly broadened the sport’s boundaries. With multiple stops necessary to add fuel, change tires and make adjustments, the Woods quickly recognized that less time spent on pit road meant fewer rivals to pass on the race track.
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Leonard Wood became the architect of what became the signature Wood Brothers Pit Stop, the key to which was modernizing the equipment used on pit road. In the early years, floor jacks weighing 70 to 80 pounds were used to lift the race cars. They also required a strong man to pump the handle – up to 10 pumps for tire clearance. Wood took apart the jack, inserted larger pistons and – presto – his brother Delano Wood could get the car off the asphalt by pumping two or three times. He ported and polished the mechanisms in the team’s air guns, allowing lug nuts to be removed and replaced more quickly. Finally, Wood modified the inside of the team’s dump cans so that gasoline flowed faster. Hired by the Ford Motor Co. to pit Jim Clark’s Lotus at the Indianapolis 500, the Woods stunned the racing world as
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Clark spent 41.9 seconds on pit road en route to Victory Lane – thanks to “tweaking” of the gravity-fed refueling rig. “We turned that thing on and it put in 58 gallons in 15 seconds,” said Wood. It just sucked the fuel out of there. We knew we were going to be under 20 seconds on the pit stops. “We got the most publicity in the least amount of time we ever got in our lives,” he added. “We hit a home run for sure.” Len Wood continues to marvel at his uncle’s fabrication skills. The team is completing a replica of the Ford Galaxie in which Tiny Lund won the 1963 Daytona 500. The car will be on display at the NASCAR M-F 8-5 • Sat. 9-2
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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
Underdog label no longer fits Kahne Zack Albert
Motorsports in 2009. Petty's organization then joined forces with Yates Racing later that year.
NASCAR.com
One by one, the principals of Hendrick Motorsports walked onto the stage to meet the press during the Sprint Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway with their impressive credentials serving as an introduction. Dale Earnhardt Jr., the runaway 10-time most popular driver. Jimmie Johnson, the five-time champion. Rick Hendrick, a winner in NASCAR's top series 209 times over. Jeff Gordon, the four-time champ and third on NASCAR's all-time win list. And then came Kasey Kahne, the fifth Beatle, fresh with a new, polarizing haircut. While his 14 career Sprint Cup victories are nothing to dismiss, Kahne still seemed like a scrappy fifth seed in a bracket full of No. 1s when comparing the portfolios on Hendrick's impressive roster. That's when Hendrick issued a decisive note of caution and perspective. "I would not call Kasey Kahne an underdog," Hendrick said. "He has not had all the components around him yet and I think we're getting there. Kasey Kahne has got the talent. He can run short tracks, speedways, has an unbelievable amount of car control and is a smart race car driver. He'll win a championship. He will be a champion. He just hasn't been in the right position. I think he's in that position now."
By 2010, Kahne was ready for a move to greener, more permanent pastures. On April 13, three days after his 30th bir thday, Kahne announced he would join Rick Hendrick, but not until the 2012 season as the powerhouse team navigated Mark Mar tin's transition to a parttime driving career. That left Kahne in a one-season whistle stop at Red Bull Racing before taking the reins of Hendrick's No. 5. Now Kahne's position is one of growing stability and continuity, more seasoned and more familiar with the organization's system as his sophomore season at Hendrick begins.
The position Hendrick references is an enviable one for any driver, but especially for one who has withstood as much turnover as Kahne has in recent years. Although Kahne became a staple in the red No. 9 in the early stages of his career, the changes to his teams' infrastructures reached far beyond the car number.
"It's the first time in a long time we've come into the new year with the same team behind us and the same working group," said Kenny Francis, Kahne's crew chief since the final race of the 2005 season. "The past three or four years, there's been a lot of turmoil, a lot of change. Now we hope that it's just a little more relaxing getting there."
Ray Evernham's team, which negotiated Kahne's ascension into NASCAR's big leagues, eventually became Gillett Evernham Motorsports before merging to form Richard Petty
If anyone seems relaxed, it's Kahne, despite the high expectations and burbling talk of a championship run in 2013.
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Those expectations start from within and at the top at Hendrick, where the team made good on the owner's bold goal of landing four cars in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup last season. It's the sort of confidence that can add pressure or motivation, or perhaps a healthy mix of the two. "It's probably a little bit of both," Kahne says, "but I feel like the reason he says that is because he knows what he has. He knows the people that he has here and it didn't happen overnight. Rick's just really confident and it's neat to be a part of all that." Kahne possessed similarly high hopes for the start of the 2012 campaign, when the team stumbled out of the starting blocks in a major letdown. By April, Kahne had claimed two pole positions but a crash, an engine failure, multiple miscues and instances of bad luck in the first six races left the team 31st in points with all the appearances of a Chase outsider.
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"Once we got past the bad luck, the driving errors, the little issues we had, I thought things went pretty smoothly from that point on. … We have a lot of things we can work on and I feel like we've looked at a lot of them throughout the offseason, so hopefully this year can start better and we can get rolling early." The one thing that won't require much fine-tuning will be the bond between driver and crew chief, one of few constants for the two during their pre-Hendrick years. With that amount of longevity, the critical art of communication has become second nature for the pairing, which will mark Kahne's 10th Sprint Cup season as their eighth together. That's why keeping Francis, who said he communicates with Kahne "by osmosis sometimes," was a high priority for Hendrick when he hand-picked Kahne.
From that resounding thud, Kahne ripped off seven consecutive top-10 finishes -- including a Coca-Cola 600 victory -to jump 17 spots in the standings. Another, more modest run during the summer helped Kahne rally against the long odds to clinch a Wild-Card berth in the Chase.
"I think now Kenny's got a year under his belt. He didn't even know half the guys on the crew when he started last year," Hendrick said. "We've refined that, and I predict he won't have as rough a start this year, so I think it should be a much easier season. Every time you can go back and not change much with that chemistry between crew chief and driver and engineer, you're better off.
"Even starting out slow, I always knew we had the speed and we were kind of in the ballpark," said Kahne, who eventually converted his Chase eligibility into a career-best fourthplace finish in the standings.
"It's like they've been here forever now. So I think this could be Kasey's year."
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2013 NASCAR PREVIEW
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
NASCAR TRIVIA 1) What year did Jeff Gordon NOT win the Brickyard 400? A: 1997 C: 1999
B: 1998 D: 1996
2) Bill Elliott won the Winston Million in 1985: which one of these four Winston Million races did Bill NOT win that year? A: World 500 C: World 700
B: World 600 D: World 800
4) What place did Dale Earnhardt finish in his final race at the 2001 Daytona 500? A: 15TH C: 12TH
B: 16TH D: 20TH
5) From 1984 to 1993, how many Winston Cup races did Rusty Wallace win while driving a Pontiac? A: 30 C: 32
B: 31 D: 29
3) What was Rusty Wallace’s car number when he won the ASA title in 1983?
6) From 1989 to 1994, how many Winston Cup races did Dale Earnhardt win while driving the Chevy Lumina?
A: #67 C: #65
A: 28 C: 30
B: #66 D: #69
B: 29 D: 31
ANSWERS: 1-D, 2-B, 3-B, 4-C, 5-B, 6-A
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2013 NASCAR PREVIEW
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2013 NASCAR PREVIEW
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
2013 NASCAR PREVIEW
PAGE 13
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The carburetors on NASCAR Sprint Cup Series engines mixed Sunoco Green E15 and air together to power the engines. Guess what? That’s exactly the purpose of EFI. Instead of mixing Sunoco Green E15 and air together at the carburetor, multiple-port EFI efficiently injects fuel into each intake runner and mixes it with the air from the throttle body. A collection of sensors and a Freescale/McLaren Electronic Control Unit (ECU) provide maximum performance and engine efficiency.
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“They have felt exactly like, if not better than, the carburetor engines we've been running.” Dale Earnhardt Jr. on NASCAR EFI engines
Holley EFI throttle body The only thing passing through the Holley EFI throttle body is air, despite being similar in appearance to a carb. Four air valves are actuated by stainless steel throttle shafts, throttle levers and linkage designed for the extreme NASCAR racing environment.
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Crew chiefs and engine technicians can and will use laptop computers to read performance data provided from the Freescale/McLaren ECU prior to the race. Once the race starts, the fuel injection system technology constantly makes adjustments, eliminating the need for teams to monitor the data in real time. Preparation will be key!
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PAGE 14
2013 NASCAR PREVIEW
New cars level playing field
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – After rain interrupted day one at Charlotte Motor Speedway, teams tested all day and into the evening under the lights on Friday. Fans and teams have embraced the Gen-6 car, but test time is still crucial as Speedweeks in Daytona nears. Each test has been an opportunity for crew chiefs and drivers to understand the new characteristics of the Gen-6 car. The playing field has been leveled out as all teams have had an equal amount of time to prepare for the 2013 season and Speedweeks, which begins with The Sprint Unlmited (Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. on FOX, Motor Racing Network Radio and SiriusXM Satellite Radio) and culminates with the the 55th running of the Daytona 500 (Feb. 24 at 1 p.m. on FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM Satellite Radio). The Gen-6 car offers a clean slate to teams, including Jeff Burton and his No.31 Richard Childress Racing team as they look to rebound after a 2012 season that resulted in a 19thplace points finish. “I think that by anybody’s measurements we didn’t have a good year through the company last year,” Burton said. “We
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
went almost the whole year without winning a race. I think it is easier to start over than it is taking an existing vehicle and starting over. It gives us a chance to stop and say ‘okay what is the best way to develop a car’ and through that, build a program that works for that. I think the timing of that is good for RCR [Richard Childress Racing] in general. Whether that will yield results or not, we will see. I think the timing of it is good for us.” Today’s session, which was again delayed by weather, was an opportunity for teams to find some extra speed and finetune their Gen-6 cars. “This is the deal where we all roll out new cars at the same time and everybody is trying to get a jump on the rest of the guys,” said Martin Truex Jr, driver of the No. 56 Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing. “We’re going to get as much time on the track as we can get.” Aric Almirola topped the charts with a top speed of 194.021 mph to round out the last open test before the start of the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.
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