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[/media-credit]Saturday, March 24, 2012
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Auto Club 400
Auto Club Speedway
Dodge PR
Keys For Success
KEYS FOR SUCCESS: Auto Club 400
FONTANA, Calif., (Saturday, March 24, 2012) – Each race weekend, selected SRT Motorsports Engineers, Penske Racing engineers and crew chiefs, drivers or engine specialists give their insight on the ‘Keys for Success’ for the upcoming race. This week, Howard Comstock, SRT Motorsports Engineering – provides the keys for Sunday’s Sprint Cup race.
Track: Auto Club Speedway (Race 5 of 36 in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series)
Race: Auto Club 400 (200 laps / 400 miles)
Trivia Question: (Answer Below) Fifteen California tracks have hosted a total of 131 Sprint Cup races. Which track has hosted the most?
HOWARD COMSTOCK (SRT Motorsports Engineering)
Showing Your Age: “Auto Club Speedway is aging rapidly. The track has developed some severe bumps and dips, especially at corner entry into Turn 3. It’s a problem teams have had to deal with ever since we’ve been coming here. As those bumps got bigger, they created setup problems for the teams. With the aging surface, there are cracks between the paving lines that have been filled with a tar-like substance. That’s fine up to the point where you go into one of the turns and put your right front tire on one of those tar strips. They (tar strips) don’t have as much grip as the asphalt does, so when you get into the corner and you happen to touch one of those tar strips, it upsets the car. That’s a problem for the drivers, something that they have to get use to this weekend.”
Fueling Matters: “With the new EFI systems this year, we’ve seen that fuel economy is a little bit different than the teams are use to. We only come here once a year, so the book on fuel economy at Fontana is empty when it pertains to fuel injection. With this most likely being a fuel mileage race, the tricky part that will be how fast teams can calculate their fuel consumption during the race, knowing the probabilities fuel economy most likely will be an issue.”
Trivia Question Answer: Riverside International Raceway hosted 48 Cup Series events, it’s last in 1988.
