 | Lead Lap Recap with Steve Letarte?1/19/07 #24 DuPont Chevrolet Crew Chief Steve Letarte talks with JGN Director Chrisy Gallagher "Designed to win" in Daytona... Chrisy: Hi Steve. It?s good to catch up with you since I wasn?t able to spend much time with you at Media Day last week. Steve: That?s because you were too busy paying all of your attention to the boss (Jeff Gordon)! (laughing) The crew chiefs were separated from the drivers for interviews this year, so it made it a simple process for me. The drivers took most of the load. Chad and I just kind of sat there and smiled while you guys were all on the other side of the room. Chrisy: Come on now?we stopped over and said hello when you guys were looking lonely! (laughing) Steve: Yeah, yeah?we know who the stars are. (laughing) It?s ok?I?m a simple guy and I like to keep things simple. Anyway, after the media deal, then I flew out to the 24 Hours race in Daytona and hung out with Jeff. Chrisy: How was that? Steve: I stayed up for 24 straight hours and I was pretty darn tired! The whole deal was really cool though. It was kind of good to get away from the Cup stuff and see something different. I got to see how the other side does it, so to speak. It was pretty interesting and I had fun. Jeff ran really well and he had a good time too. It was a busy weekend?three days in Daytona and then straight to Las Vegas, two days in Vegas and then back here to this snowy, wintry mess we call North Carolina. Chrisy: Tell us how testing went this week? Steve: Testing was average. As I?m sure you and all of the fans saw, we weren?t up at the top of the speed charts. It?s all relative though. There are so many new teams out there and so many of them need to qualify on time, so they were testing for a one lap qualifying run for speed. There were something like 55 teams in Vegas and probably 20 of them will have to qualify on time. They were eating up the speed charts with those one and two lap runs. We just stuck to our game plan and I didn?t even look at the timing and scoring; I shut it off for the first day and a half because it doesn?t matter. It?s not Happy Hour and it?s not a race. It was cold and we were running a tire that we don?t even know if we?ll be bringing back, so we were really just looking to gain some knowledge about the car and not focusing on speeds. We methodically went to our test matrix and got answers to every question we had going in. Chrisy: Comments on the new track there? Steve: Well, it will be the roughest track we race on now this year. It?ll be rougher than Dover, Darlington and Bristol for sure. In my opinion, they took a racetrack that was a great tri-oval that was just starting to get old pavement with some two and three-wide racing with a pass on the last lap for the win, and they made it a Chicago, Kansas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Texas photocopy. It?s just one more high-banked tri-oval that we?ll race at. So it is what it is. We had a good couple of days there and we learned a lot about how to work the new deal they?ve got there. The fans will love some of the changes to the infield. It?s just a big pile of gravel right now, but it should be fantastic once they finish it. The track will be much more fan friendly. Chrisy: Next up is Daytona...it?s hard to believe it?s here already. Steve: I love it. I can?t wait to get away from testing a little and do some racing! I leave on Wednesday. I?m excited about the Shootout?really excited. The car we?re bringing is designed to win. Everything we?re doing for Daytona is designed to win. We want to win the Shootout. The game plan is looking really good. **NOTE: We?ll catch up with Steve Letarte again after the Shootout race the week of February 12.** | |
