Scott
Palmer
evolved into it. The maintenance program is crazy,
too, nowadays. Troy Fasching and Jim Oberhofer
over at Kalitta Motorsports help us, too. Those
guys are running connecting rods one run. You
figure $1,600 a run for a set of rods, I mean, that’s
a tough deal. That’s why we go back home and
people ask, ‘How come you’re not running 3.70s?’
Well, we could, but you have to pick your battles.
We’ve been running a fuel car for 15 years. So, you
have to ask yourself – do you
want to be out here for 15 years
or 15 races? That’s the type of
shit that will put a small team
like ours out of business.
Most of the guys run through
the lights at 56- or 58-degrees
of timing. We ran a 3.92 and
we had 46-degrees out the
back door. So, we know it’ll
run 3.86 to 3.88 if we just put
a little timing in it down track
because we know that the 60-foot was good. It
ran .838 60-foot in Sonoma – generally always
leaves good, and we’re just easing it out the back
and being safe. We just have to learn more before
we start cranking it up and start tearing too much
stuff up. You know they all tear stuff up, but we’ve
been lucky. We’re just trying to learn this new
setup right now more so than anything.
I think there will be a few more little guys come
out and run, but I think more than anything you’ll
probably see big teams add another car or two.
Even the big teams are concerned that there’s
not 16-car fields. Now, Seattle had 18 cars but
that’s kind of a freak deal. Usually, Sonoma and
Seattle are at the most 16 cars. So this is kind of
a weird situation right now. But I think maybe
the big teams will add a car or a few of them will
to get the car count up, but, honestly, you don’t
hear a lot about new teams coming out because
Crew guys are the key – especially when it
comes to making more runs. We’re lucky. We
have a group of guys here who have been together
for a long time, so we all know what each other is
doing. If you run more races or you start winning
rounds like we did the other day…we can make
it. But we can sure tell because if you have one
little issue – you’re going to struggle to make it up
there. It’s woken us up for sure because we’ve won
a couple rounds. We’re working
on having more stuff ready for
the second round because we
realize now that it could happen. We could easily have won
those two rounds in one race,
and then you’re in the semis – it
goes fast after that.
The main problem for smaller teams like us and Jeff Diehl,
we have trouble with getting
people that can go in the first
place, and then people that are super cautious and
concerned about everything on the car. That’s why
we have a small team. We could put a couple of
guys on there, but one little mess-up might cost
you 50-grand.
I tell everyone this is not my car. This is our
car. I can’t race it by myself. We all own this car.
We’re all a big part of this deal because we live
and die by it.
In your opinion, what can be done to bring
“I tell everyone this is not my
car. This is our car. I can’t race
it by myself. We all own this car.
We’re all a big part of this deal
because we live and die by it.”
78 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
it’s just a maintenance monster. The upkeep alone
is outrageous. The Alan Johnson Stage 7 cylinder
heads are so much maintenance to keep up on
that you need more crew guys to take care of
them properly.
You’re obviously making the most of the
small team model, but it has to make it harder
– especially when race day rolls around. What
does it take to make it work, keep the energy
up and stay motivated?
Issue 112