While the NASCAR circus was out at Phoenix last week, I took the opportunity to take in a late model race at Hickory. Hickory is about 90 minues north west of Charlotte, and is a short track that used to host Busch series races, and maybe even a couple of truck races. Now it is a place for late model races and is a stepping stone track for Drive for Diversity and other young drivers. It is a pretty cool track actually. They do not let you bring beer into the track, but luckily the lot of us had just come from the Hickory beer festival, so that was about the last thing we needed. So, the main event was a 100 lap late model race. In the race there was a pretty good battle between the top two drivers until with 20 to go, one of the drivers cut a RR tire. The guy fell back to the end of the pack and finally just stopped in the middle of the track. The caution came out and he came in and changed the RR tire and bled air out of the RF tire. Yellow laps did not count, so he did not lose a lap and started at the tail end of the pack. Then he proceded to stomp through the entire field and win the race by a couple of seconds. The second place finisher was really pissed obviously and tried to park in the winner circle. He was kicked out by the officials and the result stood. Thus illustrated, in very clear terms, the importance of fresh tires. When I got home I caught the tail end of the Cup race and in a de ja vu moment, saw Newman try to be a hero by not taking any tires. I think he lost about 8 spots on the first green lap and was just a sitting duck. It is pretty funny that the teams spend so much time and money trying to make their cars good, and it can all be erased with poor tire management.

This week is Talladega and tires could not matter less here. I think we used to double stint the tires here a while back. The track is so smooth that you do not need the enhanced handling like you would at Daytona. I have to admit, I kind of hate Talladega. It is just so damn boring. It is boring to be there and it is boring to watch on TV.

I don't think alot of teams are spending alot of time on their Talladega cars. One of my other engineer friends who works for a team that will remain nameless commented to me last night, "I thought the next race was Richmond, because we haven't done any engineering work for Talladega". The teams expend so much effort for Daytona that they pretty much just dust off their Daytona primary or backup car, make it their Talladega primary, stick it in the box and send it down the road. If it is the chase race in October or if you have to qualify on time, then you will spend alot of time prepping the car, but not for this one. The race is so unpredictable that it is not good value for money to tweek on the car that much for this race. Maybe that is pessimistic, but if I was the crew cheif, I would make sure it fit the templates, and that all the bolts were tight and call it good.

It is so difficult to pick plate race winners. The cars are so evenly matched that you have to pick the drafting wizards to be at the front at the end. Kyle had a tough end to the Daytona 500 and I like the way that he tries to lead every lap of the plate races instead of laying back. So I will pick the 18 for the win. The 16 has aweful luck here, but I think their bad plate run is over, and I will pick him for a top 10. RG has had a rough run of form. I anticipate that he will stay in the back for the entire day and try to avoid wrecks and push for a top 20 in the last 50 laps. I think they will come out with a good result and kick away from the 35th owners points position.