Patience makes perfect: Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Daytona 500 because he paced himself and took care of his tires. The 2004 season will be defined by who can do the same

Sporting News, The, Feb 23, 2004 by Matt Crossman

Harder tires used in the last several seasons made a driver's ability to safeguard his tires, a skill gained largely by experience, almost irrelevant. Veterans struggled in recent seasons because they didn't adjust to the changes. They tried to race the old way, and it no longer worked. Younger drivers didn't have anything to adjust to--they never knew the sport the old way. The young drivers thrived as the sport became so dependent on technology that old hands grumbled the driver had become irrelevant.

All things new become old, and this season the old becomes new. A driver's skill is again important. "Finally," says Stewart, the 2002 points champion.

Larry McReynolds, a former crew chief who is an analyst for FOX, says saving tires will be "exceptionally important," but he expects the best teams to handle the new tires, regardless of how much experience the driver has.

"It could favor a Dale Jarrett or Rusty Wallace or Bobby Labonte because it's something they have raced before" McReynolds says. "I think young guys know how to do that, too. I think Kurt Busch knows how to do that. I think Ryan Newman knows how to do that. I think Jimmie Johnson knows how to do that."

Perhaps the most important attribute of a patient driver is his ability to drive the car he has, not the car he wishes he had. A driver knows--or should know--what his car is capable of. Trying to make it do more is a bad idea.

"If you've been running in the middle of the pack all day, and you can't get any farther than that, you aren't going to get any farther if you stick it in there where you shouldn't be," Jeremy Mayfield says. "Some guys still do it, and they wreck, and it's like, 'What the hell was that all about?'"

Even with the new tires, patient racing is scoffed at in some NASCAR

pit stalls. Patient racing conveys a softness, an unwillingness to go for it. A patient racer is the kind of guy who doesn't swing in rec softball until he gets a strike. Where's the speed, where's the chutzpah?

It's in victory lane, often enough--too often for those who think the goal in Nextel Cup racing is to go the fastest. The goal is not to go the fastest; it's to be in first when the race ends. Sometimes the fastest guy wins, but more often he doesn't.

More often the winner of the race is the guy with the best combination of speed, luck and patience. It's much easier to expect patience from others than to exhibit it yourself.

Smart drivers don't start jostling for position until the race is 80 percent over.

"People say, 'Gosh, that's not racing,'" Biffle says. "But it's strategy. The guy who crosses the stripe at 500 miles is the guy they hand the trophy and the money to, not the guy who's out there going nuts every lap"

The problem is, not every driver follows that logic. Drivers and crew chiefs profess to worry not about themselves doing something stupid but about the other guy. Always the other guy. "We're at everybody's mercy," says Robbie Reiser, crew chief for defending points champion Matt Kenseth.