Daytona and Talladega Testing

It was a sunny and cool day in Daytona on Friday, January 16.  The wind was very strong and may have had an affect in the testing.   The Busch cars took the track shortly after 9:00am.  I understand that there were strong rains in Daytona on Thursday which canceled the testing, so the teams had to try to do as much as they could on Friday and worked through lunch.

The Kraft transporter was parked on the end, so it was the first thing I noticed walking up to the track.  The majority of teams would go out for 2 or 3 laps and then come back in.  Sometimes they did plug checks and sometimes they didn't.  It took me until 11:30 to find Derrike's scanner frequency.  That number is 460.2125 for those of you that need it.  I went up and down the scanner until I heard his voice.  The only major thing I heard them doing was changing shocks.

At one point, Derrike was watching the data from the previous run and said that he noticed the tach jumping up and down.  He didn't think it was due to the wind or a bump, but thought it wasn't right.  They didn't know if it was the engine or maybe exhaust.  I left at 2:00 because there wasn't much talk and I wasn't getting much information.

While I was there, Derrike was 29th fastest out of 30 plus teams. I understand later that he did pick up his time and was the 4th fastest.

I did end up taking photos of the car and transporters and will be supplying those later.

by Bob Cope

The Kraft Busch team tested in Talladega on Sunday, Jan. 11. According to co-owner Tim Weiss, the team learned a lot and was looking forward to testing in Daytona. On Jan. 16th while testing in Daytona with the #92 Monte Carlo, Derrike was the 3rd slowest with a speed of 184.968. But the next day, he was able to pick up the speed and came out as the 4th fastest with a speed of 190.609.