The last time Roy McCauley sat atop the pit box at Daytona International Speedway, he wound up going to Victory Lane with Ryan Newman in the 50th Daytona 500.

For that to happen again on Saturday night, lots of things have to go well, McCauley said.

"From a strategy standpoint, the best thing you can do is put yourself in that top five group for the last three or four laps," McCauley said. "That's all you can really do. We did that at Talladega in April. We crossed the line on the white-flag lap in third, which was exactly where we wanted to be. If that would have played out, and the right people had made the right move at the right time, we would have won the race. The way it played out, we crossed the line third and finished eighth.

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July is a similar race, but it's not the same race. The temperature is much higher, and you struggle more for grip. In February, you could go 10-15 laps in a stint before you had to lift because the car was sliding. The race in July is going to be a matter of he who lifts the least.

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ROY MCCAULEY

"What caused us to finish eighth was, the guy behind us, I think it was Montoya, jumped a little too soon, and that caused us to protect what we had. Ryan had to make his move a little bit sooner than he wanted to, and first and second hadn't started making their move yet.

"That's a good example right there. You want to be in the top five to be able to have the opportunity to make the move you want to make, but it doesn't always guarantee that you're going to be able to make that move."

Restrictor-plate racing has its own rules, and Daytona has always been more of a handling track than a pure horsepower-meets-downforce-and-go-fast track like Talladega, McCauley said.

"It's going to be a handling race. It always has been, and I think that's still true. You still have to have power and a little drag as you can. It's a factor of two more toward being a handling race."

Despite the fact that he and Newman celebrated in February, the July race is a horse of a different color.

"There are pretty big differences between February and July based on the temperature," he said. "July is a similar race, but it's not the same race. The temperature is much higher, and you struggle more for grip. In February, you could go 10-15 laps in a stint before you had to lift because the car was sliding. The race in July is going to be a matter of he who lifts the least. That's going to be a matter of how much the car has and how much downforce it has, tire settings, shocks and springs.

"Fortunately, most of the practice that you have for the July race is in the evening, and it starts late enough that the conditions are fairly similar through the whole race. In February, you're trying to run in the daylight versus the night and the car can really change on you. That makes it difficult because you have to set up for both conditions."

In terms of adjustments, McCauley said there's some limitation on what he can do to fix the handling.

"We work on tire pressures quite a bit on the superspeedways and you also work your track bar. You won't work with your wedge bolts very much. You try to leave those alone because you don't want to raise the car for drag reasons."

Finding the sweet spot, as with most of the crew chiefs in NASCAR these days, is a work in progress, McCauley said.

"When the [new] car is in its sweet spot, it is a very drivable piece. The problem is, the width of that sweet spot is very narrow. It's a very safe car and we have had some remarkable races this year. We have to be better at our jobs to provide a better car for our drivers, because the width of the performance range is a little bit narrower."

McCauley also said that getting the car to that sweet spot is tough, but getting it to stay there is even tougher.

"A lot of that is driven by the fact that the car is very sensitive because it doesn't have a very large bandwidth of operation. It's very sensitive to changes in the track conditions, temperature and that sort of thing that happens across a full 500-mile race at some place like Chicago. The nice thing about the Daytona night race is it's in the evening, temperatures are pretty consistent, the rubber buildup is not going to be such a big deal.

"The bandwidth is better."

One thing that McCauley has to be aware of at all times, he said, is engine temperature.

"You have to watch your radiator temperatures in the draft. They go very high, and the amount of tape you run can cause you a lot of problems in the draft. You have to be a little conservative on your tape. That's the biggest factor, the cooling system.

"Not so much for reliability, but from operating temperature, it's the premier race for seeing how much temperature your engines can stand. The biggest thing is making sure my engine temperatures are correct, both in the draft and out of the draft. That relates to the amount of tape I put on it."

One item of concern for McCauley that might not seem to be a big deal is pit road. Daytona's pit road is big, wide and nothing like Dover or Martinsville, but that doesn't mean it's the easiest.

"Daytona's pit road is one of the worst that we go to, not because it's so wide, but because at a plate race, there are so few cars a lap down that you have everybody on pit road at the same time," McCauley said. "When everybody's on it, you have guys who might be running 35th pitting ahead of you, and you're running second. You might have a six- or seven-second lead in getting your stop done, and they might just be getting to their pit stall.

"Martinsville, Dover and Daytona, for different reasons, are all bad in terms of pit road."