Teamwork more important with COT going full time

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Penske Racing driver Kurt Busch found, to his delight, when he attended a recent Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series test at Daytona International Speedway, that he and his teammates, working as one unit, made their Daytona Prototype car faster for all of them.

"What I really liked about [Grand-Am] is you really are full-blown, full-tilt teammates -- where you have to drive the same car, and the three of you have to help each other," Busch said of working with Penske open-wheel drivers Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe. "So that's what's exciting, is listening to both of my teammates and applying what I can."

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So you would think that if the sole chassis in play in the 2008 Sprint Cup Series, the vehicle formerly known as the "Car of Tomorrow," is supposed to be "one size fits all;" that better teamwork would lead to better cars, wouldn't you?

Busch is one who does.

"I think you're onto something, with that [idea]," Busch said during last week's Preseason Thunder test of his No. 2 Dodge. "It's still the same, where you've got four rubber tires and you need to make your racecar go fast, and you need to rely on teammates to help you do it off the track and on the track."

Busch's two teammates, veteran Ryan Newman and open-wheel champion but stock car neophyte Sam Hornish Jr., are in Daytona this week for the next three-day Preseason Thunder session, when they'll shake down their respective Charger COTs using plenty of info supplied by Busch and his crew chief, Pat Tryson.

"With it being the same car, the details need to be even more thorough, and you need to get into it a little bit further," Busch said. "So I hope that with Sam coming aboard and the new group at Penske; that gives us three programs to bounce ideas off each other."

Of course, having what many considered to be the best team with the COT a year ago, via their nine victories in 16 starts, Hendrick Motorsports could be seen as having a leg up on teamwork.

"I think that as time goes on, everybody sorts the cars out, and that gap gets closer and closer together," two-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who won 10 races in all and a league-leading five in the COT, said. "The closer the teams work together, the sooner you can find the common ground and find the best package."

It's the reason why Johnson is fascinated with the fact that new Hendrick teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. likes the same type set-ups; and why Johnson was thrilled his teammate took a day off last week to come to Daytona, of all places, just to soak up being with his teammates. Johnson said that would help develop their cars in concert.

"If you really get inside each other's heads, as the car is developed, you're looking to split hairs," Johnson said. "If you really know each other then, you know what each other is looking for, you've built that foundation and belief on the teammates, the engineers -- all of that stuff -- you can split those hairs and get it right.

"So I think through all stages of it, being good teammates, understanding each other and working together is really important in all phases of racing. And I think Hendrick Motorsports has done a really, really good job of that."

But cooperation was a big part of that success, according to championship runner-up and Hendrick teammate Jeff Gordon's crew chief, Steve Letarte.

"It's the same story we had last year," Letarte said. "The guys at the shop and the R&D group did such a good job, we didn't find a lot of speed, but we unloaded with a lot of speed -- and that's a testament to them and how hard they worked for the last year.

Surprise visit

Dale Earnhardt Jr. showed his level of dedication to his new Hendrick team when he showed up for opening day of testing at Daytona, even though he wasn't scheduled to drive.

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"On the speedways, we've always been able to transfer data among the teams. Talladega is probably the easiest to do that at, and the second is probably here -- because here, there's a feel but everyone is kinda looking for the same feel."

And Letarte said how new the COT is, was a blessing in disguise for his organization.

"I think the COT, as far as HMS is concerned, has been a little more consistent at the other tracks because everyone didn't have 20 years worth of opinions," Letarte said. "We've kind of taken a learn together approach and I think, as a company we've picked the decision on where we're going to go, and that's why it's easier for everyone to share information.

"The more years we run 'em, the more they'll be customized to the drivers and it'll be harder to share -- but right now it's definitely easier."

So to catch Hendrick's boys, it surely will come down to teamwork and information sharing -- and doing whatever it takes.

Only two other organizations, Joe Gibbs Racing and Roush Fenway Racing, who each had a pair of victories, had more than one COT win.

With Johnson and Gordon, who scored three COT wins a piece, only Roush Fenway's Carl Edwards won more than once in the new car.

So the competition will have to exercise every option they have to catch up -- and it's amazing what tools teams have at their fingertips in this decade, as revealed by Kyle Busch, who tested a Toyota in the first session of Preseason Thunder last week, but who won history's first COT race last season for Rick Hendrick.

Asked in the middle of the test how much information he'd share with his JGR teammates and when, Busch gave the assembled media a 2008 technology update.

"All of the information is already on the Gibbs server and all of the guys back at the shop have already been looking at it," Busch said. "There have been phone calls back and forth about them already changing some of the stuff on their cars with what we've learned here.

"A lot of the engine stuff that we've learned has already been transferred back to the 11 [Denny Hamlin] and the 20 [Tony Stewart] -- and they've been running it on the engine dyno, so it's been non-stop -- Joe Gibbs Racing has been running 24/7.

"We want to give [our teammates] everything we've learned so they come back here the way we leave so they can keep going on the same path we were."

It was a theme heard throughout the garage all three days of the test.

"We'll go back, download all the data and put it on the 22 car [for teammate Dave Blaney], so they can pick up where we left off and have a good test," Bill Davis Racing Toyota crew chief Slugger Labbe said after ending his test near the top of the single-car speed chart with rookie driver Jacques Villeneuve. "And hopefully, what they work on and improve, in turn, will make us better."

But maybe the biggest statement of teamwork was made when Earnhardt Jr., whose team started its three-day test on Monday, showed up at Daytona on his day off, just to observe the goings-on.

"It's hard to simulate race trim, at the shop," Letarte said after seeing his teammate hanging out and not driving. "So we generated a pretty good list of things for Junior and them to try [this week]."

But for the fans, the best thing about the COT, Busch said, is that there are some things about it that are different.

"They have been different and I noticed it last year on some of the racetracks, with just the front-end configuration on my car, versus Ryan's," Busch said. "With us being in the Chase we went the conservative route, while with him being outside the Chase they got aggressive, found some things and ended up finishing really well -- like at Martinsville, where he finished second.

"That's definitely something we'll try this year, as we come into a new season and we're excited about that -- and with where we ran [last year] and what Ryan ran, Sam's got choices -- and he can find for himself where he wants to fit in."