Not Always According To Plan
By Larry Foyt

Whenever a race team returns to a track that they've run on before, they always try to improve on their past performance by looking at the notes and figuring out how to do it better the next time.

Last year at Michigan International Speedway, I qualified fifth in the No. 14 Harrah's Chevy, which was my career best starting position last year. However, in the race, the car just didn't handle that well in the traffic and I finished 18th.

Coming to Michigan's two-mile speedway in the beautiful Irish Hills this year, we decided to take a different approach in the Cabela's 250 Busch Series race. We brought a Harrah's Chevy that we thought would handle well in traffic even though it meant sacrificing some speed in qualifying. As much as I prefer to start up front, I thought starting mid-pack would be acceptable if it meant I'd have a car that'd work well in traffic and get me to the front fast.

The rationale behind the thought process was to be able to carry more speed into the corners and thus carry more speed all around the track.

What we didn't know but quickly found out was that my car was wicked around other cars. In fact, the Harrah's 14 actually ran faster by itself than it did in traffic, which is pretty rare. But as it turned out, it didn't run fast enough when it was by itself. We had simply too much downforce. We started 38th.

Unfortunately, this race weekend was not going according to plan and certainly not our plan.

When you get in a situation like that, you just try to do the best you can. In our case, that meant having good pitstops and trying to capitalize on the mistakes of others.

We did have good pitstops and we did gain positions when other drivers made errors or had mechanical problems. We came home in 26th place on the same lap as the winner, Winston Cup regular Michael Waltrip. In fact, the first four out of five finishers were Winston Cup drivers, but that is a whole other column.

This week we go to Bristol Motor Speedway, a half-mile high-banked bullring which hosts the NASCAR Busch and Winston Cup Series on successive nights. It is the hottest ticket in town because the action is wild and crazy. Anything can happen (and usually does). The key there is to be the last man standing, but more often than not, the winner is the one who can limp home the fastest. No one comes out of Bristol unscathed, it's just a matter of degree.