Nascar is in Michigan this weekend and I love this track. Michigan International Speedway is a 2-mile “D” shaped oval that is categorized as a super speedway. The cars carry a lot of speed in the corners here and can be two and three wide all day long depending on the tire that Goodyear brings. The track is almost identical to Auto Club Speedway out in California so anyone that was good out there will probably be pretty good here as well. Typically teams want to do well here as the track is in Brooklyn Michigan, which is close to the big three automaker’s headquarters in Detroit. This is a place that typically sees the Fords doing well and Greg Biffle was not to be denied that right as he took the pole yesterday with a time of 37.826 and a speed of 190.345 MPH. That my friends is cookin around this 2-mile oval! You can get in a draft of sorts but Michigan is not like Talladega and Daytona where you can get into the two car tango’s so don’t expect the speeds during the race to be a whole lot above that. The big difference here is that compared to the 33 degrees at Talladega and the 31 degrees at Daytona, Michigan has 18 degrees in the turns forcing the drivers to lift off the throttle a bit unlike the two super speedways where you keep it matted to the floor the entire way around the track.
There is a draw back to racing here that has seemed to raise its ugly head at a lot of tracks here this season and that is fuel mileage. Michigan has been a track where fuel mileage has become a factor in the past. I hate seeing a race end with a fuel mileage battle. It takes away from all the hard racing throughout the race. I hope that Nascar addresses the issue of fuel mileage races before the season starts next year. I don’t have a lot of answers for the problem other than the typical one, put a bigger fuel cell in the cars. I don’t know how much difference there will be next year with the entire series switching over to fuel injection but I have heard that fuel economy will be a bit better but it will not appear to be a big gain.
Lets take a look at the qualifying efforts of the Sprint Cup series this weekend at Michigan, Biffle is on the pole and what a lap that was. This is the seventh pole for Biffle in his Sprint Cup career but he almost didn’t have it as the next fastest car below him was his teams mate Matt Kenseth who also blistered off a qualifying lap speed of 190.209 MPH. These two Ford drivers are about four MPH off of the track record which is up around 194 MPH but a lot of factors play into the speed you can get around the speedway here. The time of day that you go out, temperature and humidity, the tire that Goodyear brings, all of these things play a role in whether or not you can get close to the track record. I’ll tell you this though, with qualifying speeds in the low 190’s, this is going to be a great race. Ford has got the pole and the 2nd starting spot covered with Biffle and Kenseth on the front row. “The Rocket Man” Ryan Newman qualified third in his Stewart/Haas Chevy followed by Denny Hamlin in a Toyota and Mark Martin in a Hendrick Chevy.
The rest of the top ten include Brad Keselowski, David Ragan, Dale Earnhardt Junior, Jeff Gordon, and Jamie McMurray. Three of the four Hendrick cars are starting in the top ten Sunday with Jimmy Johnson being the odd man out back in 19th. I don’t know what happened to their qualifying effort there but his practice times today will be an indication of whether or not there is a problem there. How about Junior being right there in the top ten? It was right here at Michigan where Junior’s last win came from and after a solid finish at Watkins Glen they have to be coming into Michigan on a high note. I know that he finished 15th at the Glen but that is a darned sight better than past performances at a road course. I am pumped about Junior’s chances here at Michigan. One of the keys to winning here is staying up front and out of trouble. Restarts are where there can be problems here as the field is bunched up in the double file restart where during the race after they shake off the restart the field tends to spread out and major wrecks are usually not a problem here. Keeping you car intact and clean is a big deal here at Michigan as this is a big, wide, long two mile track, aerodynamics play a pretty good role here so if you tear a corner off the car by getting loose and into the wall you could pretty much see your chances of winning here go away. Unless that is your team can put a front or rear clip together in record time and get you back out there only a lap down. We did see the 48 team do that last year although I don’t think that it was at Michigan. It is possible though.
There is a practice session today after the truck series qualifies so watch that and see who can back up their qualifying times. The trucks are running there as well and that will be a great race. Sprint cup practice is set for 10:10 this morning. The race is set to start at 1 P.M. Sunday with coverage on ESPN. The truck race is coming up after the cup practice with the green flag flying sometime shortly after 12:30 P.M. today. The Nationwide series is up in Montreal Canada running, the road course up there which has a name that I cannot pronounce and won’t attempt. They run today at 2:30 P.M. if that is your idea of fun.
As for me? I am about to undertake the task of cleaning out the Freightliner of stuff that has accumulated there for over two years and move into a Peterbuilt. There is less storage room in the Pete so I know I will have some weeding out to do. I looked into the Pete last night and saw that I am going to have to clean it as well. Its not a brand new truck, our Peterbuilts are about a year old but it is new to me. It does not appear to be a pigpen but whenever I get a new truck I still feel the need to clean it good. You never know who was living in it. Just moving into a new truck without cleaning it is like wearing some other dudes underwear. I just can’t do it!
Stay safe out there
TW
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