NASCAR Cup Series

Pocono drivers must master fuel issues

Published Jun. 11, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Who will go the distance on Sunday at Pocono Raceway?

Kurt Busch, who starts from the pole for the second consecutive week, posted a lap of 171.579 mph Saturday.

Similar to his Kansas experience, Busch’s latest accomplishment did not come drama-free. His Pocono adventures started on his second lap of second practice Friday when he crumpled up the No. 22 Shell Dodge and the team was forced to a backup car.

“There are plenty of emotions how things work,” Busch said. “Yesterday, with the wreck in practice, we had to go to the backup. If it was raining right now, we would have to start the race last. So it’s nice that we got the opportunity to go out today, the weather held off for us and our Shell/Pennzoil Dodge was money. I’m not going to give up on my guys; they didn’t give up on me.”

Still, it seems that nothing has come easy for Busch this season.

Busch led 152 laps at Kansas last Sunday, but had to short pit nine laps before the finish.

“You ran me out of fuel, champ,” a dejected Busch said over the radio.

Busch is just the latest in a long list of drivers who have fallen on the wrong side of fuel fate. Tony Stewart also had issues last week. Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran out of gas in the Coca-Cola 600.

For NASCAR competitors, fuel has been a gamble all season long. Traditional calculations can no longer be counted on for ensuring a normal fuel run — particularly with the uncertainty of how much fuel is actually making it into the tank. Teams can weigh the cans after a stop, but that doesn’t account for spillage.

Greg Biffle, who won last July’s Pocono Sprint Cup race, has gone through at least three fuelmen this season. He had a devastating performance at Las Vegas after leading 11 laps when the fuel system did not function properly over the course of the race, costing him three laps and a 28th-place finish.

Is the new fuel system affecting the outcome of races?

“Absolutely. 100 percent,” Biffle said. “The issue is that the teams are faster than you can fill the car with gas. It is that simple. The pit crews have gotten so good and the guys have gotten so good and trained and worked so hard that they can get the tires on the race car faster than you can get the car full of gas.

“With the new fuel connection or whatever you want to call it, (it) has slowed up the fueling of the car enough to where you can literally change tires faster than you can fuel. Not by much, but it doesn’t take much. You know, when you are filling 18 gallons in 12 seconds, one second, you do the math on how much fuel that is. It is over a gallon a second. So if you are two-tenths of a second off, then you are talking about almost a half a gallon of fuel or probably over that. It is very important.”

Important — and precise. The male and female parts on the single-point dry-brake system have to marry up between the fuel-can nozzle and the inlet on the car. It’s not as easy as it appears, particularly when fuelmen have to hoist the 80-pound cans of fuel and ensure every drop is forced into the tank.

Biffle says as long as this system is in place, teams “are going to always have fuel issues.”

“It has a few downsides to it at the same time as it has upsides,” Biffle said. “With an improvement comes maybe a setback or something that could be negative. The one negative thing is that it is very important — from what I understand, and I did a lot of research on it — the way you plug it in. If you get fuel on the air side, where the air returns, it is like a straw that has a bubble in it, and the air won’t come out so the fuel won’t go in. No matter what you do, you have to get rid of that can and get another one because it has that air lock in it.”

The elimination of the catch can has led to spillage of fuel on the ground, further complicating the calculations.

“The other thing that this thing does — that the guys are getting better at — is that it spills gas on the ground,” Biffle said. “They are trying to minimize that as well. When the connection comes apart, it has a void area where there is some excess fuel. It doesn’t seal up right when it disconnects. It is just part of the changes that we have to face and deal with to get the best we can. If a guy doesn’t get it perfect in there, any one of these teams are going to have that issue.”

And as Biffle points out, when the fuel can gets low it “doesn’t flow very well.”

Which makes it worse,” Biffle said. “You know as well as I do that when you start dumping something out that has a lot of fuel in it, it has a lot of pressure. When it gets lower, it doesn’t want to flow as fast.”

The new Schultz systems come with a steep cost. Retail is $1,540 plus shipping and tax, and teams need at least four systems in the pits and another three or four for practice or backup.

Biffle says a lot of work has gone into the systems, and NASCAR has offered the teams leeway “on the inside of the mechanism.”

“The reality is the mechanism is kind of what it is,” Biffle said. “There are small things they can do, and I know they have worked like heck to optimize them. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know if it is having a gallon more gas in the dumb cans or what it might be to speed it back up just a little bit. It puts the emphasis back on the pit crew a little bit.”

Paul Menard, who shares the front row with Busch for Sunday’s race, feels fuel will be a factor again. While that may be emotionally draining on the teams, the suspense is great for the show.

“Starting up front here is so important, but the last couple of races it’s just come down to fuel mileage and who can stretch it at the end,” Menard said. “We weren’t in a position to stretch last week. We were six laps short, which you can’t make up. So we had to short pit.

“It’s frustrating in one aspect that it comes down to that, and we probably would have wound up about 12th instead of 19th last week. It also opens up opportunities for guys like Brad (Keselowski, last week’s winner) to sneak one out. And we know that we can probably sneak one out one of these days, too, if everything goes our way and we play our cards right.”