NASCAR Cup Series

Fuel mileage crucial on road course

Published Jun. 24, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

Jeff Hammond

It’s interesting that this deep into the NASCAR Sprint Cup season, we are still seeing issues with the fueling system of the cars on pit road. What is so critical is the initial hookup by the gasman. He has to be able to hit his mark.

What I am seeing throwing that off is where the driver is stopping the car in the pit box. If the gas man has to take two extra steps, whether it is forward or backward, it is throwing off the timing just enough to where these cars are not getting full.

Throw in the fact that if the car is brought to a stop too far from the wall, it also affects the exchange for the second can of fuel. I think that has hurt a lot of these race teams so far.

Understand we aren’t talking about missing it by a lot. As you hear us say all the time, though, seconds do matter. To a driver, one extra second is an eternity sitting in that race car while you wait for the fueling to be done.

All the crew chiefs, engineers and jackmen know this. They all know they have to get the car full. We’ve already seen too many times this year where teams haven’t gotten the car full of gas and teams put themselves in a box. In most cases they cannot get themselves out of it.

You saw that recently with Kasey Kahne. His team thought they got the car full of fuel, but miscalculated.

I think you will see at Infineon Raceway this weekend some crew chiefs who will not take a chance on fuel. With it being a road course, you simply can’t run out of fuel because you will never get back around to the pits.

The other trend we are seeing is with the hotter weather, these cars are much harder to get refired after running out of fuel.

So I don’t think it is a matter of teams figuring out what they need to do. It actually is a matter of execution. It’s all about timing and everyone hitting their marks.

What is clearly being proven out this year more than others, because of the new fueling system, is that it is not simple. This is something that has no problem jumping up and biting the most experienced team just as much as it bites the least experienced team.

Again, it’s just the littlest of details that are putting these teams into a hole. It’s going to be up to the crew chief and these pit-crew coaches to help tighten some of this up. Perfect execution is the goal.

If I were to be back up on the pit box this Sunday, one thing I am not going to do as a crew chief is cut it that thin where my driver is hung out to dry. I would probably have it where I have a two-lap cushion. Folks will say that by doing that and not rolling the dice I will lose the race. I might lose the race, but at least I won’t lose the day.

I just think Sunday we are going to see a lot of guys be smart about this.

Now there are some out there that have no reason to be smart about it, and those are the ones that can take the finish of this race and turn it upside down.

Robby Gordon is one that jumps to mind because he has absolutely nothing to lose. He’s also good enough on these road courses where he can put himself in position to where he could steal this race out from under some really good race cars that are trying to be smart about their fuel situation.