By The Commish

A beautiful spring day in the Southland—- what better way to spend it than roasting in the seats of Lowes Motor Speedway, watching eight hours of testing? For the drivers, testing may be as exciting as watching paint dry, but for a racing fan, it's really instructive. With all the hoopla of a race stripped away, you get to see the teams working at the mechanics of their sport, and you get a chance to see how the drivers react to their teams and each other. Some of the drivers are using their regular scanner frequencies; others, like Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, and Dale Earnhardt Jr aren't on either their primary or their secondary frequency. Which makes me wonder whether they're trying to keep their setups secret or they're just tired of having people listen to every word they say.

Since the cars are testing for a night race, the early (1-5pm) session is kind of a throwaway. Most of the competitive teams only do a few runs, taking their time between laps on the track to make major changes, send their drivers to the media center, or even play football with a water bottle between the garages. Some of the teams that have struggled early (Greg Biffle, Ryan Newman, and Jamie McMurray for instance) make multiple runs. Newman has a bad afternoon. On his first run, something metallic flies out from under the car as he accelerates off pit road. An hour later, the purple Dodge emerges for a second run; this time, on his third lap, he loops the car around on the backstretch, bringing out a caution flag. He doesn’t hit anything, but the body language of the guys on top of his hauler tell the story. Biffle's team, which is testing two apparently new (or newly-bodied) cars, seems a little happier, but is burning a lot of tire money trying to better its recent results.

The afternoon session features two spins-- Reed Sorenson just after the track opens and Carl Long right before the dinner break. Both cars are damaged heavily but limp back to pit road. Still, these don't cause much of a buzz in the stands. When one of the major players—- Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson, or Tony Stewart—- makes a run, the crowd percolates. Gordon at one point grows tired of waiting to go out on the track and bypasses several cars to ask the official what’s going on; he’s then shooed back to his place in line (he’ll do that twice more tonight, but more about that later.) It’s one of the few signs of impatience shown in the afternoon session.

A woman ahead of me is chaperoning six boys who look to be between 10-12 years of age. Four of them make rude hand gestures every time Gordon passes. One assumes they’re being home-schooled. Surely no one would take their child out of school just to flip the bird, would they? But these runs are few and far between. The most laps are being run by drivers like Chad Chaffin, Johnny Sauter, and Paul Menard, who don't excite much crowd interest. Gordon makes a quick run into the media center while his team is working on the car, and exits again about fifteen minutes later, quickly unzipping his firesuit. Through the binoculars he looks unshaven and tired but seems to be making jokes with Stewart's team as he cuts through the garage stall to his hauler. Stewart is making jokes about his engine guys on the radio and harassing Kevin Harvick on pit road, preventing Harvick from getting a clean start out of his pit stall at least twice. All seems to be in good fun, though, and well in tune with the afternoon.

I wish those Dateline NBC producers had been here today. I see groups of African-American men, whole Latino families, and one family speaking Russian soaking in the sun. Retirees make up a lot of the crowd, but there are a good number of younger men drinking beer and enjoying the leisurely show. The afternoon crowd probably tops out at about a thousand, though it comes and goes. The evening crowd at its height is about 1,800-2,000 people. A number of mothers have brought groups of small children-- regrettably, most without sun screen or ear protection-- and watching those young fascinated faces as they eat ice cream and watch loud, fast cars is a reminder of why this sport can be so addictive.

The garages have a different look to them on this hot afternoon. Since NASCAR limited teams to bringing ten people, including driver and crew chief, to a test, there are few onlookers or hangers-on strolling through the garage. Most of the personnel, including a few drivers, are working on the cars or sitting at laptops, crunching track bar loads and power differentials. And yes, crew chiefs ask about these things on the radio during testing. Oh how the sport has changed. While teams work on cars, drivers fill the down time by napping or congregating in the shade of garages or haulers to gossip. Jimmie Johnson, in shorts and flip-flops, walks unnoticed from the media center. Ken Schrader, who arrived late in black leathers on a huge motorcycle, alternates between talking to the firemen and climbing to the top of his hauler to chat with his and other crew chiefs. At the dinner break, Sterling Marlin stands alone, leaning on the back of his hauler, unable to find anyone to talk to. Kasey Kahne does two TV standup interviews, then, deserted, wanders across to the garage, amusing himself by squirting his water bottle in patterns on the pavement. There are no fans around, demanding autographs or asking for pictures. It's just the race teams working on cars. A number of the crewmen are in shorts, despite NASCAR regulations. There’s little tension, little sense of the pressure of the Chase.

When 6pm comes and the shadows start to fall, the atmosphere changes perceptibly. As the air temperature comes down, the energy level picks up. The instant the track opens, several of the go-or-go-homers come out taped up and lay down very fast laps—Johnny Sauter, Travis Kvapil, and David Stremme among them. Schrader, too, puts down a fast lap in a car that looks to be mostly Bondo except for its roof. There aren't even numbers on its side. Kyle Busch, after alternating cars in the earlier session, has settled on one that is lime-green on top but mostly grey body filler on the side, and the kids filing in for the evening session spend a lot of time pointing to him.

Gordon's team totally changes its rhythm in the evening session. Gordon had made five runs in the afternoon—- two in a car that was fully painted and mostly decaled, and then three in a car that had new body pieces hung on the side panels. The second car seems a little better than the first. Both cars were able to stay right on the white line through turns one and two, and ran well in three and four, where the famed “Humpy Bumps” seem to be a thing of the past. None of these runs was more than five or six laps. This changes in the evening. In his first run, the 24B car goes about 35 laps, probably a full fuel run on the smaller cells NASCAR has planned for the Charlotte race. Except when he has to maneuver away from another car, Gordon's line is almost identical, hitting his marks in every corner. The line doesn’t seem to vary throughout the run, either, suggesting that the tires weren’t falling off a lot. My notes say "hugs line through 1 & 2 like glue, just gorgeous in 3, diamonds out of 4." Tony Stewart comes on track about halfway through Gordon’s run and ends up running behind Gordon but never catching him. When Gordon comes in, Stewart does too, chasing up a little behind him but allowing Gordon space to stop for a Goodyear tire check. The two exchange amused hand gestures as Tony passes.

Gordon will make five more runs in the evening session, two of 20 laps and one of about 10 laps, again showing the same beautiful handling characteristics. As the night deepens and the track speeds up, he is able to pass cars, often on the outside; very few other cars seem able or willing to do so. Gordon seems especially good in running down Dodges, and he seems to take real delight in passing Newman on almost every run. Most passes come at the end of the straightaway in turn 1, where the Hendrick Motorsports power superiority shows, or coming out of turn 4, where Gordon's ability to get back to the accelerator earlier gives him good drive-off. By the end of the night, every time Gordon is on track, other crew chiefs are on top of their haulers watching him.

The other teams show similar urgency. At one point, Chad Knaus asks his crew to adjust the car's geometry "a half inch on the left side and a quarter inch on the right side." This is a major setup change for late in the night, and Knaus says, "obviously, guys, as fast as we can do this, please." Fewer than 20 minutes later, Johnson is back out. The driver and crew chief exchange sarcastic comments about testing all night, but the length and detail of Johnson's debriefs for each run-— almost down to the car length in some instances-— show why that team is so good here.

As the darkness deepens, it gets harder and harder for teams to get on track. Many are trying to make qualifying runs but are cut off by other cars emerging from a different gate onto the track. Harvick gets revenge on Stewart by blocking Stewart's takeoff, and Robby Gordon causes Jeff Gordon to hit the brakes on a late run. At one point cars are coming out of the pits three wide trying to get laps in, and a NASCAR official on pit road holds up the main line to let one of the sidelines go. Gordon tries to bypass the stalled line and take off, but is flagged down by the official and made to wait two laps before he's allowed to go out. At this point it's probably good that no one is listening to Gordon's radio as I'm sure the comments were choice. Without all the TV lights around the pits, the garage rows are in almost total darkness, and grey and black cars are nearly invisible. Martin Truex's car at one point looks like disembodied decals floating down pit lane, a very surreal sight.

The evening has only three incidents. Denny Hamlin, who's tried to start cold from pit lane every run to practice making the transition from concrete to asphalt, spins his car out on pit road and ends up, unharmed, in the grass. Stewart, on the radio, sarcastically cracks, "Aw, did we have an incident?" Chad Chaffin slides along the turn 4 wall with an hour to go, pancaking the side of the car, but drives it back and the caution is short. With about half an hour to go, Johnny Sauter's car blows an engine fairly spectacularly, requiring a 15-minute delay for track cleaning. The already-cool track drops a few more degrees, and the last fifteen minutes of practice are a frantic mixture of long runs and banzai attempts. Gordon goes out for a long, 20-lap run, and spends most of it passing other cars. He passed Soctt Riggs and Kahne, then caught Kyle Busch who was on newer tires, and nearly caught Jimmie Johnson before the session ended.

All of this is taken in by a mixed but happy crowd. A number of the evening spectators are fathers with young sons. In front of me is 7-year-old Gordon fan Zachary Cooler, who solemnly prints his name in my notebook and tells me Jeff will win the race here. His father says that Zachary is the race fan in the family and that he is picking up racing from his son "by osmosis." Zachary, in full #24 regalia, picks up every Hendrick car coming out of the garage instantly and can recite statistics about wins and championships verbatim. He and his dad borrow my binoculars to watch the Hendrick crew chiefs on top of their row of white test haulers and seem very excited to see Steve Letarte climb to the roof as Jeff launches a run. When they left, they promised to check out the website, so I promise to put Zach’s name in the article—- here you go, buddy. We redheads have to stick together!

Too soon, it seems, the caution lights come on. There's no flagman, no pylon, and no big screens for testing. The night is done. Crews start to push cars to their haulers and helicopters land in the darkness beyond turn three to pick up their fares. Two long days of data collection and experimentation are over. Gordon looks to be one of the strongest on track, even if he hasn't made one of the fastest runs in practice. Now the engineers, the crew, the body guys, and the rest of the professionals have to take the data collected and make magic with it. I leave the track in the deep spring darkness, thinking that Zachary may just be right.

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