Football
Associated Press 18y

NASCAR's Dodge teams getting their acts together

LAS VEGAS -- Two races into the 2006 NASCAR Nextel Cup
season, its looking a lot less like a good time to get out of
Dodge.

Three drivers of the DaimlerChrysler model rank among the top
seven in points, including second-place Casey Mears.

With the myriad problems the Dodge teams have had with the
Charger model, introduced at the beginning of the 2005 season, the
fact that Mears, fourth-place Kasey Kahne and seventh-place Ryan
Newman have gotten off to such a strong start is somewhat
surprising.

"These are definitely the hardest cars I've driven -- ever,"
Kahne said Friday as his team prepared his No. 9 Charger for the
opening practice at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The big problem with the Charger remains the difficulty finding
and keeping the car's aerodynamic balance during races.

"It's still a really, really sensitive race car, especially in
traffic," Kahne said. "You can make a little change and it will
totally hurt you here and help you a little bit there.

"Everybody at Evernham Motorsports has done a great job trying
to make it not such a tough race car to drive, and it's better.
It's not a whole lot better. It's similar to what it was last year.
But I have a great race team and I feel like that alone will get us
some good results this year. ... Putting that together and a little
bit of gain with the Charger, hopefully, we can have a good year."

The 2004 Rookie of the Year drives for Ray Evernham, whose team
spearheads Dodge's development program for NASCAR. Mears drives for
Chip Ganassi Racing and Newman for Penske Racing South.

Evernham and Ganassi, which both field a trio of Cup cars, are
sticking with the Charger, working hard to turn the model that
DaimlerChrysler is selling to the public into a winner on track.

Penske Racing South and Petty Enterprises, both two-car teams,
are working with the 2004 Dodge. The 2-year-old car, originally
raced as an Intrepid, is being used at some tracks, including Las
Vegas, a move sanctioned by John Fernandez, Dodge's director of
racing operations.

"We're trying to determine what is the best direction for us to
go," Fernandez said Friday. "Each of the teams has its own idea
and own development program.

"The consensus among the Evernham and Ganassi guys was that
they were fairly convinced they were on a path to get the Charger
to where it needs to be. The Penske and Petty teams wanted to work
on a change around the headlight area to see if that is a good
solution to the problem."

Fernandez said that while Dodge has no interest in racing the
Intrepids any more, "I'm trying to win races. How we get there and
what we use to get there doesn't matter, as long as we get there.
And we're trying to make sure we get a good, solid comparison and
data."

The first two races have produced some strong results for Dodge.
With everyone driving Chargers, Mears was second, Newman third and
Kahne 11th in the Daytona 500. Then, at California Speedway, Kahne
finished fourth and Mears seventh in Chargers, while Penske drivers
Kurt Busch and Newman were 16th and 20th in 2004 Dodges.

Fernandez said Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChyrsler 400, on a fairly
flat 1.5-mile oval, will be "a big acid test" for the Dodge
development program.

"We're honing in what we want to use for the rest of the
season," he said. "Then we'll go forward to NASCAR and say we're
all on the same page and this is what we'd like to do.

"We're probably 80 percent of the way there by just doing
development work. But we think we could still use some help on the
nose of the car," Fernandez added.

The Dodge drivers will take any help they can get.

"I think by no means is it resolved," said Mears, who finished
seventh here each of the past two years. "I think we've narrowed
in on it, for sure. But there are some issues we're currently
dealing with that we're probably going to be dealing with the rest
of the year."

^ Back to Top ^