Pocono 500 Qualifying Update

Pocono Raceway -- 06/08/08

Author: Becca Gladden

Published: Sunday Jun 8 2008 2:33am

Here are a couple of interesting notes regarding Sunday's Pocono 500 (wow, a race that still bears the name of the track where it's being held).

Kyle Busch (+805), "the story" of the 2008 season, qualified 10th on Friday, but crashed in practice Saturday morning. Busch wrecked in Turn 3, hitting in the inside pit road wall. Since the team will be going to a backup car, Busch will start the race from the rear of the field.

Turn 3 itself appears to be "the story" of this particular weekend. As a result of a repair to the racing surface, there is now a 15-foot strip of new asphalt in the high groove of that turn. Drivers who hit the strip just right have gained as much as 5 miles per hour coming off the corner.

In fact, Kurt Busch (+1145) highlighted Turn 3 in his contribution to this week's Dodge Motorsports Keys to Success: "Turn 3 is still the one that leads to the longest straightaway," said Busch. "If you can get your car to work on the new asphalt, you’ll have an advantage on Sunday."

On the other hand, If too many drivers are trying to hit the strip at the same time, Turn 3 could turn into Calamity Corner. At the same time, a few drivers may try to stay on the bottom through the turn with hopes of getting past those who go to the top.

"I think it's going to make things interesting because it's leaving that whole inside grove open," Jeff Gordon (+1485) said. "If you can get your car working down low there, we're going to see some side-by-side racing down there, or we're going to see guys going in and try to slide up in front of guys. It's definitely going to make the race interesting."

Also in the Dodge report, Chris Carrier, crew chief for the No. 77 Dodge, discussed the two biggest worries of crew chiefs at Pocono: Fuel mileage and brakes.

"500 miles is a long race here and it’s a long distance around this racetrack," Carrier said. "The penalty for running out of fuel here is huge as compared to other tracks such as Bristol. If you run out of gas here in Turn 1, your day is pretty much shot. You’ll see all the crew chiefs start working on gas mileage windows right from the start of practice on Friday, all the way through race day on Sunday. Brake packages will also be a key to the race. You’ve got a front straightaway that’s almost 3/4 of a mile long, and when you dive off the first corner, you’ve got to slow that car down some how. Brake specialists will really work hard in trying to figure out how to cool the brakes down - too much, too little -there’s going to be a lot of teams worrying about brakes until this race is over Sunday afternoon."

Yet another issue Sunday will be the heat. With ambient temperatures in the 90s and the track surface even hotter, teams will be working hard to keep both the drivers and the cars well-cooled throughout the day.

"It will certainly be the hottest race of the year," said Kasey Kahne (+565), who will be starting on the pole this weekend. "At some point, we knew that we were going to have this (hot) day. It’s been such a cool race season thus far that we probably got a little bit spoiled. At this track, I’ve gotten hot here before, but fortunately there are some long straightaways that help push some air in the car. But for some reason, you still feel the heat and you tend to get really hot inside the car. You just have to hydrate yourself a lot tonight and mentally get ready for the hot temperatures tomorrow."

Kahne led qualifying on Friday with a 170.219 mile per hour, 52.873 lap. He was followed by four Chevy drivers: Jimmie Johnson (+475), Mark Martin (+1205), Regan Smith, and Joe Nemechek.

Rounding out the top 10 on the starting grid are Carl Edwards (+485), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (+1385), A.J. Allmendinger, Scott Riggs, and Kurt Busch (+1145).
Several of those same drivers were dominant throughout practice, including Kahne, who led the first practice on Friday and was 2nd in Happy Hour, and Carl Edwards, who led both practices on Saturday.

Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin appeared in the top 10 across the board (all three practices and qualifying).

Drivers starting further back in the field include Ryan Newman (+4550), 27th, Kevin Harvick (+3850), 28th, Greg Biffle (+2085), 33rd, Clint Bowyer (+3850), 35th, and Jeff Gordon (+1485), 38th.

Roughly 72% of all the Cup races held at Pocono have been won from a top-10 starting spot (20% from P1) - leaving about 28% of winners coming from outside the top 10.

And here's a bit of trivia about Pocono that you can use for your next bar bet. Each of the three corners here was modeled after the same-number turn at another race track: Turn 1 after Trenton Speedway, Turn 2 after Indianapolis, and Turn 3 after Milwaukee.