Ryan Newman gives us the runaround

"At Dover, the fastest line around the track is the lowest line. The goal is to keep the left front tire right on the edge of the apron. In every turn, you dive the car to the low line and hug that apron. Dover is a really fast track, so each driver makes big, smooth laps. To win, though, your car has to be perfect on the bottom.

"I've adapted to the track pretty well. I understand what it takes to get around there. It's a track that's usually plenty racy. Cars are able to pass instead of beating on each other to get by. There are a couple of grooves you can work with. It's fast. It's physically demanding and mentally demanding to hit your marks."

Dover is a long, hard race on the concrete surface. You tend to slide around. Generally what happens is the expansion Joints in the surface fill up with rubber as the race goes on. The first 100 laps are not so bed, but when you have all those cars and all that rubber getting in the expansion joints, it messes up your shock package, it makes little rubber speed bumps, and the cars get to bouncing around. That is generally what the driver complains about at Dover. You have to have the car set up so you can make any adjustments necessary to handle this problem.

--Slugger Labbe, crew chief for Michael Waltrip, on CrowChiefClub.com

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