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By Ricky Rudd, Special to SI.com
June 13, 2003
5:33 PM EDT (2133 GMT)
Ricky Rudd, driver of the No. 21 Motorcraft Racing Ford Taurus, has 52 starts at Michigan International Speedway, every NASCAR Winston Cup event since 1977. He won the June 1995 race and has posted nine top-five finishes and 22 top-10s. Here are Ricky's comments on a lap around the two-mile track:
You go down pit road and up through the gearbox. We did data acquisition on it the other day -- the speeds are quite high, 200-plus mph in a Winston Cup car -- and up the backstretch coming down the front straightaway at speed, you will see cars run up against the wall, and then you will see cars exit Turn 4, drive down to the inside at the start-finish line. They will swoop down and then swoop up again. And you will see a little of everything.
Down the front straightaway, car placement is not a speed issue; it's just what you need to do to catch the draft or shake the draft. But, when you come into the entrance of Turn 1, you want to be able to enter up against the fence and swoop down into the corner, making a pretty arc down into the corner. As you are arcing down into the corner, you want to make a late arc. If you make an early arc into the corner, the front end will push on the car. It won't turn, and it will tend to move up a lane or two.
If you have the ideal arc, you want to stay out as long as you can and not do anything quickly, but slowly steering down into the corner. You will drive that car all the way down into the corner, into the center of the corner before you lift the throttle. When you lift there during a qualifying lap, you roll back out of the throttle for a second and then roll right back into it wide open when you are set up good to run a fast lap.
In race trim, you will be out of the throttle for a couple seconds. And when you drive it into the corner, when you get into the middle of the corner, the car will pick up a slide in the race. You will slide either the front end or the back end, or the car will slip evenly so have to really pay attention there. The car can get away from you in race trim when the car starts to slide around.
Michigan is a momentum race track, and you want to carry as much momentum through the corner as you can so that when you enter the backstretch, you enter with as much speed as possible.
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The backstretch is pretty eventful, and a lot goes on there during the race -- a lot of passing. The backstretch is a much flatter part of the race track than the frontstretch.
It is kind of uneventful until you start to enter Turn 3, which has quite a bit different look from the driver's standpoint because you are more straight when you enter the corner and make a left-hand turn into the corner, where the front straight carries you into Turn 1. From the backstretch you've actually got to turn to enter the corner.
But you'll see a little bit of everything going into that corner. You'll see a guy going into the bottom and you'll see him slide three lanes all the way to the top of the race track. If you see a guy doing that, most of the time he's not steering the thing, he's actually sliding up the race track. So it drives pretty similarly to a dirt track, the way it is.
If you had the ideal setup you would want to be able to drive your car down against the inside line and stick. If you can do that, that is the preferred setup at both ends of the race track, but that doesn't happen very often. You have to set the car up sort of like you would at a dirt track, and then come back with the power. Usually, you always have one end sliding or the other.
Michigan's Turn 4 is very famous for pushing the front end, not having the front wheels connected to the racetrack. And if you do get a push when you get to the exit, you have to lift the throttle. And when you do that, that's bad because you lose your momentum.
In qualifying, you might see a guy alter the lane that he drives (during the race) by maybe the width of a car, so you've got to be looking pretty close.
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But, because it is a momentum track, you want to drive a car right to the point where the car starts to four-wheel slip, but don't quite get it sliding. When you get it sliding, you start to scrub speed, so it's a real hard, difficult track to know how far you can go before you crack the throttle.
If you get too greedy, try to go too far and get the car sliding then you have to play defense and catch the car. And then you lose your momentum in the straightaway, so you want to be able to get that car right to the edge of a four-wheel slip, get out of the throttle and get the front end connected and stand back in the throttle and keep that momentum. That's what it takes to run a fast qualifying lap.
If you get too greedy, you will hear the driver say, 'Well, I overdrove the racetrack.' That's what they are speaking of. They tried to get too much speed carrying it in there. And once it gets to sliding, you have to wait about three seconds before it sticks again. Where if you drive it to the edge of the slide, you are only out of the throttle about a second. If the driver gets too greedy and starts sliding, he'll drive harder but run slower.
Ricky Rudd drives the No. 21 Motorcraft Racing Ford Taurus owned by Wood Brothers Racing.
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