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NASCAR DRIVERS LEARN THE ART OF ROAD RACING

Road racing, at least in the form practiced by the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, is one of those things that either seems to come easily…or not.

Road-race specialists, known as ringers, come in and adapt fairly quickly. This is the style they know, and all it takes is getting used to the heavier cars and the attendant stresses placed on the braking systems.

But what if you’re a classic oval racer, used to turning left a few times a lap and keeping the hammer down?

It’s a situation all NASCAR regulars have to face, and as with most things in life, you either take to it or have to work hard at it…sometimes both at the same time.

Take Kyle Busch, for instance. Until 2008, he was like most of the stock car set on a road course: out of place and struggling for results. That year, however, something clicked, and he won going away at Infineon Raceway, which is by far the more technical of the two road courses on which the series competes.

“In the beginning. I was lost, to be honest with you,” Busch said. “I raced Legends cars on road courses at Infineon, and learned the technique and stuff of shifting and braking and all that and then got to the Cup cars and they are so different. I was just lost.”

At the time, he was with another team, and his road-course success came at the wheel of the No. 18 M&M’S Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing. He credits Max Papis, who now drives the No. 13 GEICO Toyota, for coming up with the notes and write-throughs he needed to be fast at Infineon.

“Much of that expertise goes to Max Papis and learning stuff from him and reading reports that he did and picking up on it, as well as following guys like Boris Said and Robby Gordon, the guys that are good at it and fast at it,” Busch says.

Apparently, he is a quick learner, because earlier in the season he won a NASCAR Nationwide Series race in Mexico City as well.

“We won at Mexico City, that was pretty cool in the Nationwide Series; that was my first road-course win and here again we won at Infineon,” he said. A couple months later, he swept the road-course portion of the schedule by winning at Watkins Glen.

Late in that race, he passed Jeff Gordon, who has won more road-course races than any driver in NASCAR history, on his way to victory. Knowing that, the tendency was for Busch to push harder, the way he would on an oval track.

That doesn’t happen much on a road course, at least in a stock car.

“I was just trying to drive away and when you try to drive away, you tend to get a little loose at times and you tend to let it hang out a little bit and stuff and just try to get further away,” Busch said. “Once I looked up and he was about 10 cars back, I sort of slowed back down a little bit and got more into my rhythm and stayed smooth and felt like I was doing my job right.”

Busch is one of the drivers who caught on fairly quickly. David Reutimann, on the other hand, has had somewhat more difficulty catching that particular wave. A top-20 finish at Infineon in June gives him hope that his learning curve is a little flatter than it was.

“It’s no different than going to any other place,” Reutimann says. “It just comes down to the car you’re driving. My technique’s definitely gotten better, but you don’t go to any racetrack hoping for a top 20. You want something better than that. A top 20 at Sonoma was a pretty big jump for us compared to what we’ve done in the past.”

Reutimann’s career has been spent, for the most part, turning left only. It takes quite a bit of practice to learn to turn right as well, as he will at Watkins Glen International. WGI has three left-hand corners; the rest are rights.

“I’ve just continued to practice since Infineon, and I’m going to do some more with [former Michael Waltrip Racing teammate] Michael McDowell, running some late models at VIR and things of that nature,” he says. “It’s a work in progress and it will be until we win some races on one of those things or at least run in the top five. When that happens, we’ll continue to work on that, because those places are very technical and you only go there once a year.

“It’s something you have to work on and continue to refine.”

The fact that road racing is more technical (as in more corners that aren’t relatively similar) is even more difficult for the NASCAR drivers because they can’t test at either WGI or Infineon. They have to go to places like Virginia International Raceway or Kershaw, S.C. to practice.

“You have to change things up a lot,” Reutimann said. “It’s no different than going to a racetrack you don’t often go to, like when we test a short track or something like that. They aren’t even close to what we’re going to race on, but you go there and try to pick up little things that you’re going to work on at any given track, and those are the things that are going to make a difference.”

Busch said that winning once on a road course gave him hope that he could do so again, perhaps at Watkins Glen.

“Winning at Watkins Glen was something pretty cool, obviously,” he said. “We just have to look to running well there, it's a race that's close to the Chase and hopefully we will be up in contention where we are safely in.

“And now that we know we have won here, we can feel like we have a better base point for unloading there and running up front and trying to win there, so hopefully we can.”

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