Around The Track: Left turns can be tricky

Ricky Rudd, driver of the #21 Motorcraft/U.S. Air Force/Rent-A-Center Ford Taurus has one of the best road course records of all current competitors on the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit. Rudd is one of only four drivers who have competed at every event (17) held at Watkins Glen in NASCAR's modern era. Ricky has two wins and eight top-fives at the New York track, placing in the top-five in over 47% of his races at the Glen.

	Ricky Rudd has a pair of victories at Watkins Glen International. Credit: Autostock

Here is a lap around the historic track with last year's polesitter.

If you start your lap at speed on the front straightaway, you are in third gear as you enter Turn 1. You drive to about the three or two marker there and you brake hard. I heel-toe, downshift from third and back to second. You go as hard as you can in that corner without wheel hopping or overshooting the corner.

At the second turn, I grab first gear right before I turn into the corner. When you turn in, you put your inside tire, which in this case is the right-front tire, down almost on the inside of the track. You drive right up on the ripple strips a little bit. As soon as you get rotated, you stand right back in the gas wide open.

Sometimes you fishtail a little bit and you use up every inch of racetrack. There are some ripple strips on the outside of that corner. You actually let your left side tires drop out against those ripple strips. Your car shakes around a little bit, but it doesn't hurt it.

You are in first and you grab second right before you enter the esses. You grab third gear and you roll up off the throttle, maybe you back off from wide open to three-quarter, and then you are right back in it as you turn into that corner.

The trick there is keeping all the momentum that you can climbing that hill. The esses are all virtually uphill and you want to keep the momentum going and use every inch of racetrack. You start off with your right-front tire on the inside as you start in Turn 2.

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As you exit, you are in about the middle of the track and you want to be careful not to let the car drift over too much to the outside of the racetrack because it puts you in an awkward position as you enter Turn 3, which is a left-hander. It is critical to maintain backstretch speed. The trick is to launch through Turn 3 with all the speed you can without having to crack the throttle. That'll put you out against the guardrail on the right side of the track.

You slide right up against the guardrails, using every inch of racetrack so that when you grab fourth gear as you enter the backstretch it's not really a corner, it's a bend, which is really no trouble maintaining wide-open throttle. But right before you get to that point, you grab fourth gear, high gear, and you run it all the way down what I would consider the backstretch until you get to the inner loop.

I brake hard and a lot of times I'll come from fourth gear, skip third, and come right into second. It takes time to do that. So you drive in as deep as you possibly can, deeper than you think you can get by with. Again, brake hard. I brake hard with my right foot. I bring the rpms up with my right toe, and bring it back into second gear and drop the clutch. You enter the right-hander that begins the inner loop and you put your right front tire up on the speed bumps there. It is very violent through there, but being pretty and smooth is not necessarily the fastest way.

How you enter the inner loop determines how you exit the inner loop. So again, you want to carry speed through there. There are cars all over the racetrack. It is definitely not a place to pass on the exit of that loop, but you can pass under braking getting into that corner.

You want to come out of the inner loop wide open in second gear and quickly grab third gear down into that horseshoe corner which is a long, sweeping right-hand corner that's downhill. It feels like it is off-camber. Speed is made and lost in this corner so we work hard on getting the car set up there so I can use a lot of exit speed.

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You exit that corner and enter that short backstretch in third gear. You run third gear all the way down to the left-hand corner at the end of that stretch -- Turn 10. That goes over that bridge over the tunnel there for the infield traffic. Usually, you get right to the middle of that before you get out of the gas and get on the brakes hard. This is a left-hand corner that presents some problems. You see cars go off the track there because our cars are all fixed to go to the right and you sort of sacrifice your left-hand corners because there is not a lot of speed to made there. So when you enter that left-hander you see a lot of guys get out of control there, and cars get very upset because they don't like going to the left, they like going to the right.

So, you end up coming across just like you do almost all your corners -- you clip the inside corner and use every inch on the exit. Sometimes you see guys hang wheels out in the dirt. Everyone's been there before but it's not the fast way to go because you end up having to crack the throttle. This sets you up for the final corner.

	Credit: Autostock

When you exit Turn 10 you are on the right side of the racetrack and you need to get quickly back over to the far left side of the racetrack. I grab second gear right before I make that left-hander, so I'm in second. Exit Turn 10 in second gear on the right side of the track, floorboard the throttle, move the car over to the left side so that when you turn into the final corner, Turn 11 it sets you up for the proper line into that corner.

It is similar to downhill skiers running ski gates. The placement of the car is very critical to the final corner. So you medium brake going into 11. You are already in second gear and you leave it there as you go in that corner, trying to keep as much momentum entering that straightaway as you can. After you make the right-hand turn you come under the start-finish line, you grab third gear going past the flag stand and down the front straight, which sets you up again for Turn 1.

Ricky Rudd drives the No. 21 Motorcraft Racing Ford Taurus owned by Wood Brothers Racing.