Most of the time I just write about food, but I figured I'd take a stab at writing something technical. But first, since I consider myself a tiny bit of a writer, I'd like to give a shout out to Michael Crighton who died this week. He obviously wrote Jurassic Park among other books, and produced E.R. (which I have never watched). I think Jurassic Park was the first book that I read twice. I was about 12 or 13 when that came out, so it was right up my alley. Then Jeff Gordon drove the Jurassic Park car, and it just couldn't get any better. I think my favorite video game for Super Ninetendo (besides Mario Kart) was the Jurassic Park game. I found an downloaded an emulator a few months ago and I was playing on the plane all the time when I still worked for Robby. I was obsessed with it. Anyway...I thought that Crighton was a cheesy writer, but then I heard a portion of an interview with him on NPR this morning and it changed my mind. He said something to the effect of "When I was in medical school everyone was taking notes about how to be a doctor and I was taking notes on how the doctors interacted." I effed that up, but bottom line, he was switched on and I can appreciate that.

Technical discussion starts now. I wanted to demystify one of the more basic setup choices for crew chiefs and engineers...spring selection. Sping choice is based on one of two things, aerodynamic attitude and/or mechanical grip. At 1 mile and under tracks (like Phoenix this week) the choice is mainly based on mechanical grip. The softer the springs (in general) the better mechanical grip you will have and the faster you will corner. At 1.5 mile and over, the springs are used to tune the aerodynamic attitude of the car, so heavier springs can be tollerated because the car will make more aerodynamic grip than mechanical grip. If the springs are too soft at a big track, the car will roll alot and it will result in less downforce.

The difference in rate between the left and the right side springs at an end of the car is important too. For example, if you run a 200 lb spring on the LF and an 800 lb spring on the RF, you have 600 lb of "spring split" and the car will want to push like crazy. Consequently if you run the same combo at the rear, the car will tend to be looser, all things being equal. So you have to test to work on how to get the car balanced and fast with the right spring combination.

So where do you start? Well, big teams will do alot of simulation to figure out what springs will yeild the most grip at a given track. Then they will go out and test and see if the driver feels a good balance around the spring rates that the computer spits out and you adjust from there. You can also go to the 7 post rig and run a lot of tests to figure out how much grip you can get without messing up the aero platform. Smaller teams just rely on past notes and experience and sortof wing it when they get to the race. All the crew cheifs have other crew chief friends that they can call and get a hot setup from, so in the end, most of the grid runs about the same spring combination on any given week. I believe the technical term is the "Garage 500"

So there you go. Spring 101.

Predictions for this week. Hendrick cars are bad fast at the shorter flat tracks like Phoenix. I'm going for a Dale Jr win this week. I don't think it's the 24's year, and the 99's streak has to end sometime. I think the 9 will get back on track and get a top 5. As for Robby, his head will be in Baja as it is next week, and he hasn't run good here in a COT yet, so I'll go for a 32nd 3 laps down.