NASCAR Cup Series

Rare weekend off gives struggling teams chance to diagnose issues

Published Apr. 3, 2015 10:30 a.m. ET

Larry McReynolds

This is the first off-weekend after seven weeks of racing when you include the Sprint Unlimited race back on Feb. 14. Don't forget that included in that was three weekends out West. So the first thing I have to do as a crew chief is I have to rest and re-energize my guys because they don't get another break until the third weekend of June, which is Father's Day.

That's priority No. 1 to me as a crew chief no matter if we are running well like the Team Penske group or struggling our guts out like Roush Fenway Racing. At the same time, this is when you have to start figuring some things out. In these last seven weeks we've been to six different tracks, and we now can see some trends.

Probably the only group I've seen make a marked improvement over these past seven weeks are the Joe Gibbs Toyotas. Roush Fenway Racing is still struggling. One thing I've noticed that probably hasn't been on a lot of radars is some ECR engine issues. AJ Allmendinger had issues early at Auto Club Speedway and then there were two issues last Sunday at Martinsville with Allmendinger, again, and Austin Dillon. So I am sure they are trying to figure out what's going on there.

The biggest thing for all the organizations across the board is you have to isolate what you are fighting. I hate to seem like I'm always kicking Roush Fenway Racing while they are down, but using them as an example seems to be the blind-obvious. We all know it's not the body or the Ford engines. So they have to lay all their data out from all three teams and quickly come up with a solution as to where they are missing the boat on their chassis.

Overall this is a good time for a break. Everyone can take a step back, take a deep breath and refocus on the task at hand. Next weekend we head to Texas Motor Speedway which will be another good measuring stick of where your program is at when it comes to aero, chassis and all those things. So while teams will be decompressing to a certain extent, they'll also be planning for this next stretch run.