NOTEBOOK: A Game Of Chess
K&N East Teams Make Strategic Play For Success At Greenville
GREENVILLE, S.C. – It was a strange sight at Greenville Pickens Speedway on Monday evening, watching race car drivers toss both instinct and conventional wisdom out the window net in a battle to go… slower.
The Kevin Whitaker Chevrolet 140 on the worn-out half-mile was a game of chess in which NASCAR K&N Pro Series East drivers and teams played a sort of reverse-chicken. Instead of racing to gain track position as quickly as they could in the early going, almost to a person drivers slid back outside the Top 10 in an effort to not push the speedometer and wear out tires.
“I’ve never seen a race here where we were all on the same game plan like that,” said Eddie MacDonald, the series veteran who went from 15th at the midway point of the event to finish fourth at the checkered flag. “It made it a little easier because everybody was on the same page. Nobody was really trying to race each other, except for a couple of guys who didn’t really know what the game plan was.
“It was interesting to watch it happen.”
While MacDonald, who posted his 83rd career top five finish in 169 starts, was one of the most glaring examples of that patience paying off, he was far from alone.
First- and second-place finishers Dylan Kwasniewski and Daniel Suarez, respectively, also used the strategy of dropping back and reserving every last ounce of rubber they could in their tires. Kwasniewski, who won the 21 Means 21 pole award earlier in the afternoon, slipped back as far as 10th before making a charge back to the top of the leader board for good on Lap 108.
Suarez, meanwhile took the lead on Lap 3 and led a race-high 65 laps before surrendering on the race’s only restart on Lap 68. He built a huge lead over more than a straightaway in the first third of the event, but later dropped all the way back to as far as 15th position after a restart just shy of the halfway mark. He rallied to the podium with a furious charge over the final 50 laps.
“I think we waited probably a little too much, but how do you know?” Suarez said. “We were waiting for the yellow flag that never came out.”
MacDonald echoed that sentiment, saying that a precisely placed caution flag would have made a difference for those who opted to wait. His No. 71 Grimm Construction/National MS Society Toyota made the most headway from Laps 100-115, moving all the way to eighth on the rear bumper of Kenzie Ruston.
That’s where MacDonald thought a caution would have changed the race.
“At that point, I look and we’re a straightaway behind the leaders,” he said. “But after I got to about fifth, I had to drive so hard to get up to the top five, the tires were pretty worn out. If we could have made up that ground, I think we’d have had a chance to get to third.”
As it was, MacDonald moved up to fourth in the overall standings – four points out of third with four races remaining. He’s within 17 points of Brett Moffitt in second.
“We were going really slow at the beginning, then we picked it up around Lap 90,” MacDonald said. “Then on Lap 110 we really started going, and by Lap 120 there was nothing left. Without a caution at the right time, it didn’t really help us group back up.”
Kwasniewski, it perhaps goes without saying, likely played the best game of chess in the Kevin Whitaker Chevrolet 140. Not only did he begin motoring forward with just over 50 laps remaining, he diced effortlessly through the top five once he got there. The Las Vegas, Nev., native enjoyed perfect timing in his bid for the race lead (and ultimately the victory) – going early enough so he still had the benefit of rubber under his Chevrolet, but not going so early that everybody else had rubber of their own left to chase him down with.
Like MacDonald noted, once Kwasniewski went and opened up a nearly three-second advantage, nobody else could muster a challenge on fading tires.
“We just had to have the confience in what we were going to do to win this race,” Kwasniewski said. “We just had to make sure we saved the tires, and that’s what we did.
“We had to drop back a little bit just to make sure we had enough left at the end, but that’s what you’ve got to do. We didn’t want to fall back too much where we put ourselves in a bad spot when we did have to go back up. We just had an awesome car.”
An awesome car, yes, but he also played a pretty good game of chess.
Sources: Travis Barrett, Special To NASCAR Home Tracks