NASCAR springs change for 600 qualifying

MountaineerTom · May 24, 2001

NASCAR is trying to take some of the qualifying tricks away from Winston Cup teams, and Lowe's Motor Speedway is the first track where they will have to deal with that.

Cars make their qualifying runs Thursday night, beginning at 7:15 at the Charlotte track, with all 43 positions for Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 to be determined.

NASCAR issued a technical bulletin before The Winston last weekend tightening the rules governing springs on Winston Cup cars. Similar to rules in the Grand National and Truck series, the regulations take away some things teams were using to keep cars down out of the air during qualifying runs.

"It's kind of like back in the old days," driver Dale Jarrett said. "We've got hard tires and nobody knows all this stuff about softer springs and all of that stuff in the front. We're just back to things that we used to do."

The new rules require springs that are between 7.5 and 8.5 inches tall, and teams will no longer be allowed to put spring rubbers between the coils for qualifying.

Rubbers are used to alter the spring rates. Softer ones can be inserted to help a car meet minimum height requirements during inspections. On the track, with air pushing down on the springs, the rubbers compress and allow the nose of the car to get lower.

The new rules also outlaw "bump stops," which are designed to keep a car's nose down.

So what does that all mean for Thursday night? That's hard to say, since teams have had a week to come up with ways to get around the rules.

There will be a two-hour practice for teams to sort things out, beginning at 3 p.m. Thursday, but the afternoon conditions could make it difficult to learn much that will help in the early evening time trials.

Teams also will keep a close eye on the 2 p.m. drawing for qualifying order. Later, almost always, is better at Charlotte.

Last year, Dale Earnhardt Jr. broke the track record Ward Burton set in 1994 by running a lap at 186.034mph to win his first Winston Cup pole. Burton's mark was 185.759mph.

Chevrolets have won seven of the past eight poles for the Coca-Cola 600, a streak that includes five in a row by Jeff Gordon from 1994 until 1998. Bobby Labonte won the 1999 pole in a Pontiac. The last Ford to win the pole for the 600 was Bill Elliott's in 1992.

With two notable exceptions, qualifying has been a good gauge of success at Lowe's Motor Speedway in recent years. Five of the past eight races on the 1.5-mile track have been won by cars that started in the front row, including Labonte's victory from the second position last October.

Matt Kenseth, however, qualified 21st last year before his first victory came in the 600. Gordon started 22nd but won in the fall of 1999. Gordon also won the 600 from the pole in 1997 and 1998, and Jeff Burton won from the second position in May 1999.

There are two new elements to qualifying this year: It's Thursday night after being on Wednesdays in recent years, and there will be only one round.

Winston Cup cars will not, in fact, be back on the track after Thursday night until Saturday morning, when there will be practices at 8:30 and 10:45 a.m. before the CarQuest 300 Grand Nationalrace. Qualifying for that race will be at 1 p.m. Friday.