QUESTIONS & QUOTES presented by Q Q& Preparing For 2012
1 • WHEN DOES YOUR TEAM START WORKING ON THE NEXT SEASON?
KURT BUSCH: “If you make the Chase, you’re focused on what you have to do to win the championship. But Talladega usually falls in October, so you’ll start to see car preparations being made from October to be ready for February.” REGAN SMITH: “With us not really being in the Chase picture, we started in late July. Once you rule yourself out of Chase contention, you start immediately.” DAVID REUTIMANN: “I don’t think they ever stop working; it’s always a progression. Stuff evolves and changes so quickly, you’re just constantly turning stuff over, redoing stuff and coming up with different things to make the car better.” KEVIN HARVICK: “When you’re getting ready for the Chase, that’s the fi rst thing that you do — get everything ready and prepared for the Chase. Then you can start worrying about next year. Our speedway program is a constant evolution.”
2 • WHAT AREAS DOES THE TEAM WORK ON?
BUSCH: “Aerodynamics are the primary focus. The engine department wants to fi nd new things, and we’ll test those during the offseason. And there might even be some chassis structural design changes.” SMITH: “You can probably try some new stuff a little more. So if you’ve got some parts or pieces that you’re not sure about, you can take a little bit more of a chance with them.” REUTIMANN: “There’s not any one area that they focus on. They focus on aero, they focus on trying to make the chassis and the components lighter and they focus on suspension geometry.” HARVICK: “Most of the stuff is proving ground stuff at the desert that we work on with the speedway cars. And it just depends on what projects they have going in the shop. They are constantly trying to improve every piece on the car. It really is a constant evolution of everything.”
3 • WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHANGE YOU’D LIKE TO SEE?
BUSCH: “We qualify really well, but we usually lose a little bit of speed during the races. Is it due to the way the chassis design is structured to burn up one tire more than the other tire? That’s one thing I think we need to work on. And you can always improve on pit stops.” SMITH: “We keep on getting better, and we’re still on an upward trend with the stuff that we’re doing now. I think the direction we’re taking is really good.” REUTIMANN: “Our guys do a good job, but we need to focus on being more consistent so that every time we show up, we’re where we need to be. If we could be more consistent, we would be more productive.” HARVICK: “We’ve been trying so many different things and have just kind of thrown caution to the wind as far as strategy and things like that. It really hasn’t panned out well. We’ve got some new things that we’ll be trying, so it should be interesting to see how it works out.”
KURT BUSCH Cup Series driver
REGAN SMITH Cup Series driver
DAVID REUTIMANN Cup Series driver
KEVIN HARVICK Cup Series driver
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Photos: Jim Fluharty (2); Elmer Kappell, Walter Scriptunas
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