Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s new surface and Goodyear’s new hard tire compound made life difficult in last week’s All-Star Challenge, as evidenced by the many wrecks and the less-than-flattering comments afterwards.
This week, the challenges will be even greater. In the All-Star event, Cup teams have had some practice and 90 miles of racing on the tire and track combo. For the 600, however, they’ll have to deal with plenty of track changes as well.
The Weather Channel is calling for temperatures to reach into the low 90s on Sunday afternoon. That means that the new Lowe’s pavement will have all day to soak up that beautiful sunshine.
The downside, of course, is that tires hold less grip when the track surface is hot. At places like Richmond, where qualifying is held as the sun goes down, drivers prefer to run later because the track surface will have cooled down and provide more grip.
Maintaining any sort of grip during the early stages of the race will be paramount.
Then, crews and drivers will have to adjust their cars as the track cools off and becomes more manageable come nighttime.
Remember, most of Cup’s top drivers didn’t run the preliminary Nextel Open; they had pre-qualified into the All-Star Challenge. The event was delayed by rain as well.
So if the complained about the grip under those conditions — cool, damn, night weather — Sun-day afternoon will make for some poor racing.
And none of it will be the fault of the drivers.