NASCAR teams in the dark under new lights
No one's sure how first night race will work out
After seven years of racing at the 1.5-mile track on the outskirts of suburban Chicago during the daytime, the race was moved to Saturday night this season.
But NASCAR threw its teams a curveball by not scheduling any nighttime practice sessions at the track in the two days leading up to Saturday's race. And Thursday night's qualifying session was rained out, meaning the first time many drivers will see the track under the lights will be when they take the green flag.
Add in NASCAR's new Car of Tomorrow, which is being used at Chicagoland for the first time after it appeared only in selected races last season, and Sprint Cup series champion Jimmie Johnson says teams are doing a "large degree" of speculating on how to properly adjust their cars to make them handle properly.
"There is a lot of guessing going on," Johnson said. "And engineers are working hard with the crew chief to dream up the optimum setup."
Teams usually keep meticulous notebooks of information on which suspension settings seem to work best in different conditions at each track. But Johnson's teammate, Jeff Gordon, said Hendrick Motorsports' book on Chicagoland won't be of much help this weekend.
Johnson said it would be a lot like the 600-mile race at Lowe's Motor Speedway, where teams begin racing in the daylight and end up under the lights.
"As time goes on, we just learn how to adjust and anticipate what things will be like," Johnson said. "I would assume that a lot of guys will have the philosophy that you would in the 600-mile race that we have and the track changing and having spring rubbers and a lot of adjustments that you can change quickly on a pit stop built into the cars. But we're all learning."
Several Cup stars were in Friday night's Nationwide series race, hoping a warm-up race under the lights would teach them a thing or two that they could apply to Saturday. Among the big names racing Friday were Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle.
"Fortunately I'm in the Nationwide race, that's what helps out a lot of us guys," Busch said.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. said the track already was becoming easier to pass on with age, as cars stick better to broken-in pavement. Racing at night could make for an even grippier track, making passing easier.
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