Track dominance

For some teams, success is a given on certain raceways

If the same cars used the same setups and raced on the same tires under the same rules every year, then it’d be far easier to understand how one driver or one team finds a way to dominate at a particular track in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.

But no matter how quickly things change in the sport, there are situations in which success seems to be a given.

NASCAR has moved through a series of rules changes for restrictor-plate racing since the start of the 2001 season, but nothing has changed Dale Earnhardt Inc.’s dominance at Daytona at Talladega, Ala.

DEI’s Chevrolets have won 10 of the past 13 points events at those tracks, including a victory by Dale Earnhardt Jr. in this year’s Daytona 500. And after Matt Kenseth won Sunday at Las Vegas, it was again obvious to point out that Roush Racing now has won five of seven Cup races at that 1.5-mile track.

Those tracks are not the only places where it’s easy to find such trends.

Kurt Busch, for instance, has won three of the past four at Bristol, Tenn. Jeff Gordon won five times in a seven-race stretch at Darlington, S.C., between 1995 and ’98. Jack Roush-owned Fords won five times in eight races at Lowe’s Motor Speedway beginning with the fall race in 1998.

“If you look at different teams throughout the year, there are different tracks that guys are just really good at,” Tony Stewart said. “Different teams that find different packages that work for them really well.”

Stewart should know. Joe Gibbs Racing, which fields the No. 20 Chevrolets for Stewart and the No. 18 for Bobby Labonte, has won six times in 13 races since Atlanta Motor Speedway, the site of Sunday’s Golden Corral 500, was reshaped into its current 1.54-mile configuration.

Labonte has five of those wins and nine top-five finishes in those 13 races.

Bobby Labonte celebrates his March 1998 victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he's won six times in 13 races.

Stewart has one victory and goes into this weekend having finished in the top 10 in each of the past five races at the track, with four of those being top-five finishes.

Is there a secret ingredient these teams bring to certain tracks?

“If there was one, I wouldn’t would tell anybody what it is,” Kenseth said about his team’s success at Las Vegas. “But setups, rules, tires, aerodynamics and bodies change so much that there’s not four springs, four shocks and swaybars that we bring back here and run every time.

“I don’t think there’s one thing that Jack knows that makes his cars all win here. I just think it’s a combination of the teams and all the people he has in place and how hard they work and how good they’re prepared throughout the winter.”

One factor that can be overlooked is the driver himself. Confidence, Labonte said, is as good of an explanation as any of why he’s won five of the past 13 races at Atlanta.

“It has just been a good track for me,” he said. “I go way back to 1982 when I ran here for the first time in a Daytona Dash car. I finished third in the first Dash race I ever ran, I beat Larry Pearson and Michael Waltrip and the throttle hung wide open.

“Maybe that’s what got me over the hump, I don’t know. That’s all I can say. I have no idea.”

Tony Stewart's team cheers his March 2002 victory at Atlanta. He has finished in the top 10 in each of the last five races at the racetrack.