THE DARK NIGHT OF JIMMIE JOHNSON

SPONSORED BY:

INTERVIEW:SAM HORNISH JR.

Hard Card2015 VOL. 2 ISS. 1

HOW TO BE KEVIN HARVICK

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CONTENTSFEATURES19 THE DARK NIGHT OF

JIMMIE JOHNSON27 The World's Highest

"Low-Tech" Engine36 SAM HORNISH'S

"SECOND CHANCE"

COVER STORY12 HOW TO BE KEVIN HARVICK

UP FRONT04 Pace Lap

Brand-New Year … Brand-New War

05 Motormouth Boots On The Ground

09 RACERBOY Socially Uncooperative

11 WHEN TITANS TEAM UP

32 ECHOES AND BACKFIRES C.Y. And The Bear

21 Big Bill And The International Audition

33 Photo-genics…

PUBLISHERBOB WEBER

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFTED WEST

CONTRIBUTORSBOB WEBER GEORGE DAMON LEVY PETER MANSO

ART DIRECTORKIM CONKLIN

TECHNICAL DIRECTORROB GRADY

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERBRAD SCHLOSS

SMITHFIELD FOODSPRESIDENT/CEOLARRY POPE

PRESIDENT/COOGEORGE RICHTER

CORPORATE VP/GLOBAL CIOMANSOUR ZADEH

MANAGER – MOBILITYJASHMIN SHRESTHA

Hard Card2015 VOL. 2 ISS. 1

This, and every issue of Hard Card, is provided free of charge to the fans of this great sport. We at Smithfield Foods are passionate enthusiasts (just like you!) and want to share our access with fans as never before.

We welcome your comments, thoughts and requests at hardcard@smithfieldfoods.com

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BRAND-NEW YEAR … BRAND-NEW WARSprint Cup 2015 is doing just what you’d expect – sprinting out ahead of us like there is a tomorrow, and it’s already here!

We’ve got some catching up to do…The new 2015 Rules Package may not look

like the technological shakeup of 2014—but we look closer in “Motormouth.” New rules will make some 2014 hot-shoes ache and moan … and some 2014 strugglers will be spinning victory donuts.

Look over our shoulder … we’ll put all the inside stuff just a click away.

What’s Inside:We look at the Jimmie Johnson State of

the Union. He was at a low point in 2014, but it won’t last. He’s already won in his second

start. We tell you why we told you so!Speaking of over-achievers, Champion Kevin

Harvick was 2014’s Jimmie Johnson. Why? In the first installment of a two-part interview with Peter Manso, Kevin tells you about technology-secrets sharing you’ve never heard before!

George Damon Levy looks deep inside NASCAR engines. The rules keep the playing field strictly defined … but the brightest minds in America and F1 spend up to a million dollars finding each brilliant new Cup horsepower!

And Sam Hornish Jr. has something to prove. The Indy 500 Champion is back in Cup, and HARD CARD INTERVIEW explores

his roots, open-wheel triumphs, Cup lessons learned, and what he hopes to prove in the #9 Richard Petty Ford Fusion.

Publisher Bob Weber’s “Racerboy” marvels at how everything in Cup depends on those gummy trees in Indonesia. And in “Motormouth,” Petty Motorsports crew chief Trent Owens of the #43 Smithfield Ford Fusion analyzes the 2015 Rules Package. After winning Daytona last July, Trent is in full-expansion mode and hungry for more checkers.

Come into the garages with us. Remember—you’ve got HARD CARD ACCESS!

PACE LAP

5

BOOTS ON THE GROUNDBy Ted West

Why are Kevin Harvick or Jeff Gordon or Joey Logano so hysterical climbing out of their cars in Victory Circle? They’ve won before. Yet their arms shoot straight up and they woooo-hoooo! like they just won a Cancun honeymoon with Carmen Electra.

Because they’ve lost so often and so hard—that’s why!Professional racing is war, see, and losing never gets easy. Every NASCAR

race has 43 starters and 42 losers. From the “first loser”—second place—on down the list, you’ll find plenty of people who’ve had a really bad day. In Cup, really bad days come in six-packs, by the case … by the carload.

The trouble is, if you’re going to be any good in Cup, you have to be able to look in the mirror after your very worst day, smile, and say … okay, find a way!

It’s not for everyone.Which is why I enjoy talking to my friend Trent Owens, the #43’s soft-spoken,

unshakable crew chief. He’s a fighter. Not a kick-boxer and not a Navy Seal, maybe, but they’d all understand.

In Trent’s fight, there is no debate. Air strikes and smart-bombs are good. Intel is good. But you’ll never win his fight without boots on the ground. Hands-on. Hand to hand. A Navy Seal would watch Trent, smile, and say … okay, find a way!

In 2013, Trent found a way. As crew-chief on Kyle Larson’s Nationwide car, he won the Championship. So in 2014, Richard Petty Motorsports put him in the deep end. He was made chief on the Smithfield Ford Fusion—just when the 2014 rules package canceled the standard front ride-height rule and sent everyone scrambling.

Even 2013 Champion Jimmie Johnson was underwater. He and chief Chad

MOTORMOUTH

Richard Petty Motorsports #43 crew chief Trent Owens.

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Knaus struggled for three months finding spring rates and custom shock-valving that gave the #48 a stable gun platform in traffic.

Ditto Trent Owens and his driver, Aric Almirola. Losing doesn’t get

easy, we said. By mid-season, Aric was qualifying way fast … but then the car raced back to mid-pack and pitched a tent.

No surprise. In Cup, teams spend a lot of time underwater, holding

their breath. But then suddenly, Trent and Aric went to Daytona in July and ran up front until only the rain stopped it. Woooo-hoooo! They were in the Chase—anything could happen.

It didn’t. But they’d won. Nobody could

say nay. “Last year, we researched the

springs and shocks to death,” Trent says, “to figure out why we’d qualify really well, then race so bad. We’d qualify in the top ten or better, then run 20th. We had to figure out that disconnect.”

A case of over-solving a

problem? They’d switched springs and shocks week after week, optimizing mechanical grip. The #43 had excellent raw speed—except in traffic.

“The good cars can pass,”

Trent says, “but you see some cars get stuck in back, and they can’t go anywhere. Is it because the good car is handling better mechanically? Is it because it’s that much better in traffic aerodynamically? I don’t know the exact answer.

“Our cars were upset very negatively by other cars. Anywhere there was a tight groove, we were stuck where we were and couldn’t pass. We feel now it was aerodynamic. The key is consistent downforce balance. We had balance shifts going on, depending on whether we were by ourself or

in traffic. Always, you want more downforce, but the key is keeping the balance consistent.”

TROOP BUILD-UP In January, 2015, RPM moved into a 90,000 sq. ft. Mooresville, NC, facility that dwarfs its previous 38,000 sq. ft. shop. The staff grew by 35, to 100. And the new shop meant far more than additional closet space.

“For the first time, we started hanging our own outer bodyshells,” Owens says. “To improve aero, we needed to make our racecars more consistent.

“The product we were taking to the racetrack each weekend wasn’t the same—we needed to increase quality control and know what we had. In 2014, we had some great runs, and some really bad runs, and we needed to improve our consistency. With the level of competition as high as it is, we won’t always be a top-five car—but we always need to be a top-15. To do that, we need the exact same racecar every weekend.”

Professional racing is war, see…

BOOTS ON THE GROUND HARDCARDACCESS.COM

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In 2016, RPM will also begin building its own chassis. This D.I.Y. logic goes all the way back to 2014’s ride-height rule. By mid-2014, they got the new spring and shock-valving figured out.

“The system’s shorter suspension travel helped keep the car balanced,” Trent says. “And as steady-state as it runs on the racetrack, it’s very low and doesn’t move a lot. Concentrating on optimizing aero is the next logical step.”

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER PACKAGEThe 2015 rules package is nowhere near as upsetting as 2014’s. A six-in. rear spoiler replaces last year’s eight-in. spoiler. The radiator pan will be reduced by six inches, to 38 in. wide. Downforce and drag are reduced, and the cars’ balance will be inherently less “tight.”

Also, the 2015 fuel-injection throttle-body has a smaller tapered spacer, cutting power at the rear wheels from 850-900 hp to 725-750. The minimum 3300-

lb. vehicle weight drops to 3250, final-drive gear ratios target 9000 rpm maximum, roller valve lifters are legal, and a driver-operated track bar adjustment is allowed. According to NASCAR, less power, combined with less drag and less weight will reduce lap speeds “no more than 3-4 mph.”

With less power in 2015, minimum drag is critical. And less acceleration means the driver will be on the throttle longer each lap. End-of-straightaway speeds will be lower, and better balance may create higher mid-corner speeds.

“I was in the XFINITY series during a similar power reduction,” Trent says, “and from a crew-chief standpoint, it makes it harder to pass. Momentum becomes really important, and it’s hard to run side by side. Drivers are in the throttle longer in the corner, and it just becomes more difficult to race around each other. In a car that you have to let off the gas going into the corners, this generates more speed separation and better opportunities for racing and

BOOTS ON THE GROUND HARDCARDACCESS.COM

passing.“Some races this year, you’ll see

the high line preferred, because you’ll be running higher rpms, and the car will run faster down the straightaway—the cars won’t have the acceleration off the turn they did in the past. And you’ll really have to time your passes. It just makes things tougher.”

It’s war, though, right?“The new package doesn’t create

any new problems that weren’t

there before,” Trent says. But he adds, “The 2016 package,

with even less downforce than 2015, will be tested in the All-Star Race at Charlotte. NASCAR has to allow Goodyear time to develop a proper softer tire that will have some speed fall-off—which everyone knows creates better racing. But 2016 looks like the best racing package of all!”

Of course, that’s a whole different war….. HC

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SOCIALLY UNCOOPERATIVEBy Bob WeberRubber. I don’t know about you, but to this day, I still have a mental block against connecting a Goodyear racing slick with a tree growing in Indonesia.

Those trees produce a compound called latex, which forms the chemical basis for natural-rubber tires. Go figure. Goodyear racing slicks used on race day vary the amount of natural and synthetic rubber (a petroleum distillate) they use to alter the characteristics of the tire. Regardless of the amount of personal care assigned to building that tire, no matter how much they are coddled and caressed by a technician, then lovingly mounted to 15-in. steel wheels, they remain socially uncommunicative.

Racers speak about their tires talking to them, but no matter how carefully you cast your ear, there’s not a whimper to be heard … until you exceed the amount of grip they provide. Then they howl in protest, but it’s likely too late to do anything about it!

If you think about it, though, that hot shoe in the Sprint Cup car running at 205 mph down Daytona’s back straight shares the same dynamic connection to the ground as you do in your street car. Only four skimpy patches of rubber connect your vehicle to the road. Perhaps 200 or so square inches of rubber in the case of that Sprint Cup car are asked to support 3,250 pounds … and the burdensome weight of millions of loyal fans … layered atop the dreams of a driver looking to punch a hole in the established Cup driver’s pecking order. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Those four little contact patches are the crucial medium through which you

RACERBOY

issue commands to your vehicle: turn, brake, accelerate … or just spin deliriously to the threshold of self-destruction while the happy driver celebrates a day where it all came together and you and he won!

But to make those uncooperatively

silent tires talk to you so that you can coax them to perform at their highest level, you’ll need to learn a whole new vernacular. Words don’t work here. You’ll need to rely on your hands, your feet, and most importantly, your butt.

Fed Ex Camry … getting expressly fed.

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Tires have a theoretical limit of adhesion they can provide to the driver. You can enhance that limit by applying more downward force to the tire, such as when you brake the vehicle and the natural transference

of weight forward increases the contact patch … but only up to a point. Or, you can exert downward pressure through aerodynamic influence. That front splitter and rear spoiler you see might signal to you

that this is a race car, but what they really do is reshape the flow of air around the car—all simply to provide more downward pressure on the tire. In turn, the tire responds with more grip … but only up to a point. How the driver manages that silent conversation with the car’s tires has everything to do with the final outcome of his/her race.

As a rabid fan of the sport, pause for a moment and give this some thought. The ‘box’ or rule book around the car in Sprint Cup racing is mercilessly tight, with almost no

“wiggle room.” You could argue the entire matter of success and failure comes down to how well the driver and team optimize the use of those four skimpy contact patches of non-conversant rubber. They decide

who lifts the trophy high and sprays the fizzy drinks. Why? Because enhanced grip makes higher cornering speeds, which makes higher speeds on the straights, and if you maintain that balance best for 400 or 500 or 600 miles, you’re untouchable.

It seems so simple, doesn’t it? But when you have 43 highly skilled drivers and crew chiefs and engineers, plus multitudes of fiercely determined crew members, all using the very same tools, the difference between being the winner and “first

loser” is measured in hundredths, even thousandths, of a second.

Now, if we could just get that black, gummy tire to speak a little louder…. HC

Turn, brake, accelerate —or just spin deliriously

SOCIALLY UNCOOPERATIVE HARDCARDACCESS.COM

“Huzzah!” RPM’s Aric Almirola wins Daytona, July, 2014.

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In 2014, three titans of industry teamed up to create one of the most innovative race-fan experiences of the year: Waffle House Race for Rewards. Waffle House, Richard Petty Motorsports, and Smithfield Foods heralded the ultimate race-fan experience by doing what each of them does best.

WAFFLE HOUSEWaffle House, the short-order icon of the South, knows race-fans better than any restaurant in existence. This overlap of fan-base made it an easy decision to give Waffle House patrons exactly what they wanted—a trip to pit lane with Richard Petty Motorsports!

Waffle House has 60 years of experience serving signature meals like the Breakfast All-Star™; Scattered, Covered & Smothered

Hashbrowns™; and a Patty Melt™ for the record books. A tight focus on bacon and incentivizing meals with a trip to a race turns every visit into a historic occasion..

SMITHFIELD FOODSSmithfield Foods, the primary sponsor for Richard Petty Motorsports, acts as a key partner for Waffle House, providing almost all of the pork products served at their locations. Smithfield fostered the relationship between the other two giants, creating the ultimate trifecta.

Smithfield Foods also acts as a leader in their industry. Cutting-edge sustainability practices matched with a foundation of almost 80 years of experience makes them a force to be reckoned with. The partnerships in place

WHEN TITANS TEAM UPBy Braden Buckner

make them unstoppable.

RICHARD PETTY MOTORSPORTSRichard Petty Motorsports needs no introduction. With “The King” at the helm, this legendary race team takes Waffle House’s—and Smithfield’s—reach to a whole new level. Richard, the winningest driver in professional motorsports, is the perfect partner for the other two winning wonders.

RACE FOR REWARDSLast year was incredibly successful. A few lucky Waffle House regulars, customers who love to pig out on Smithfield products, participated in Waffle House’s Race for Rewards contest.

They ate tons of Waffle House food—and of course primarily, the bacon and ham. Each time they dined with Waffle House, they uploaded their receipts onto an app that awarded them additional

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points—and extra points were given to Smithfield products. The fortunate winners power-slid into victory lane … none other than the No. 43 pit!

2015This year, the stakes are higher; the hype is more intense; and the degree of innovation and interaction with fans makes Elon Musk look like he makes golf karts….

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Sign up for Waffle House Race for Rewards at www.wafflehouserewards.com, or download the app, for your chance to be part of racing and Waffle House history. And follow Race for Rewards on Twitter, @waffle_rewards, to stay updated on all the action!

13

HOW TO BE KEVIN HARVICK

Californian Kevin Harvick’s Chevrolet dominated Cup 2014, winning regularly, and constantly running faster than anyone else. We wanted to know why.

So we put ace Peter Manso on the case. Manso wrote the definitive book on the great Jackie Stewart, Faster, in 1973. And he recently published a riveting true crime book, Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod and the Trial of Chris McCowen. He is also a featured writer at Car And Driver, Vanity Fair, NY Times Magazine, and the Sunday London Times … and he doesn’t take no for an answer!

PM How do you explain the consistency behind your 2014 Championship? The stats are amazing. You led 2137 laps, which is more than three times your best performance in any of your thirteen years of running for the Cup. KH A lot of that had to do with the fact that we qualified so well, which race to race put us on pole or in the top five. When you have a car that qualifies well, it usually means it has a lot of speed in it, and we had very, very good cars. Most of the season, it wasn’t the kind of thing where you had to try to strategize your way into anything. We just had fast cars.

2014 CUP CHAMPION INTERVIEW

CHAMPION HARVICK TELLS PETER MANSO HOW TO BEAT HENDRICK FOR A WHOLE YEAR —USING HENDRICK’S OWN ENGINES!

We just had fast cars…

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INTERVIEW // HOW TO BE KEVIN HARVICK

PM: Were you worried at any point that the Hendricks motors you were running weren’t up to the in-house motors being given to Jeff Gordon or Dale Jr. or Jimmie Johnson?KH: I had that concern before I decided to take the job at Stewart Haas Racing, but the way the Hendricks engine shop is run, you never know which engine is going to Hendricks team drivers and which to SHR. The motors “rotate.” At the end of the season, the guy who put the winningest engines together, who accepted the engine builder award at the Vegas awards banquet, had actually built two winning motors for me, one for Jeff Gordon and one for Kasey Kahne. There’s a system of A, B, C, and D motors, where one week you’ll be on the A cycle, the next week on the B cycle, and so forth. It’s very fair. Theoretically, a motor I might use one week could be in Dale’s car the next.

PM: How much horsepower variation is there from one motor

to the next?KH: One to three horsepower, no more. These guys have it down to a science, using computers and everything, and when you’re talking about a 900-horsepower engine, you really can’t feel the difference.

PM: With your car’s speed, the wisdom of your crew chief, and the support you were getting from SHR’s engineers, would you say that it was the combination that made the Championship possible—really the cumulative benefits of SHR as a team? KH: I’ve thought about this a lot—it just felt like all the pieces were there. We have a ton of resources at Stewart Haas Racing, not the least of which is that we have access to all the Hendricks cars, and the way the two groups work together makes a huge difference. It’s an open book between the two organizations. Everything flows back and forth in terms of information on setups, you name it, and it allowed us to solve problems faster.

PM: This open-book arrangement between the two teams exists even though the two groups are competing against each other?KH: As long as everybody is open about it, it works well, because it’s easier to race seven cars than to race the rest of the field. But this kind of arrangement isn’t unique. Richard Childress Racing lines up with six or seven cars, and the

Toyota teams share information also. Did we compare notes with Jimmie and Jeff Gordon? Yeah, we did. If they wanted to see drive files or something on what we were doing, it wasn’t uncommon for that stuff to go trailer to trailer on any given weekend, whether it’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday.

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PM: Is it possible to speak of individual teams as having a particular “culture” or “style?” KH: Definitely. I’ve been in two different organizations now, and I think the cultures can be dramatically different; at SHR we have four cars that can go down four different paths, whereas at RCR, everybody ran the same

chassis, the same parts and pieces. At SHR, each crew chief has control of his team—it’s not all handed to him—so he can be creative, which is what Gene Haas and Tony believe in. If something works, then everybody can adapt that model and try to make it better.

PM: So the set-up for Danica’s car, for example. might be totally

HARDCARDACCESS.COM

different than yours?KH: Yes, although Danica’s car and my car were probably the closest two in the shop, while Tony and Kurt’s cars were more similar to each other. Tony and Kurt like to run a looser set up; Danica and I like to run our cars with a little tighter feel.

PM: And this kind of independence, car by car, was not the case at RCR?KH: They tried to keep the chassis the same, the bodies the same, and parts and pieces the same, so that from a financial standpoint, things could be more streamlined. Richard is a businessman and he has to make a living off the things he does in the shop. Gene is definitely not as involved as Richard would be. At SHR, you’re free to go out on your own—to try something. But at the end of each practice session, all four engineers and crew chiefs and drivers sit down and talk about things—what did and didn’t work—so all of us can benefit before the race. At RCR, we shared but not to

the same degree.

PM: How much of this is because Tony Stewart, one of SHR’s owners, is a racer?KH: That was one of the reasons I went to SHR in the first place. When I signed with RCR, I was looking for Dale Earnhardt to help me win championships, but obviously Dale passed away. In going to SHR, I had Tony, who’d won three championships, and also Kurt, who’d won a championship. And when you add in Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and all the championships on that side, that’s a lot to lean on. Add in the commitment that Gene Haas makes from a financial standpoint, and I knew I wanted to be involved. I’m still learning exactly who Gene Haas is, but it’s clear to me that his philosophy is to hire the right people and then give them the freedom to do what they think is right. You never hear Gene saying, “You can’t buy this part this week, because you’re overspent already.” It’s rather, “You guys go get what

Harvick’s racing boss, Tony Stewart, left, getting Clint Bowyer’s best advice.

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you think you need in order to win—go make it happen.”

PM: Which is the same message behind his giving Kurt Busch a ride, where he was saying, in effect, “I don’t care what you’ve done in the past, or what you’ve been accused of, I just want you to win races, and I’m going to support you.”? Political

Correctness doesn’t matter to this man, Haas does what he thinks is correct?KH: Right. Perception is very important to a lot of sponsors and teams in NASCAR, but the message Gene sends out is, “We win. We don’t really care how we get there, we just want to get there.”

INTERVIEW // HOW TO BE KEVIN HARVICK HARDCARDACCESS.COM

PM: Which is altogether refreshing in today’s NASCAR?KH: Sure. SHR is very different from most teams and how they function.

PM: And your relationship with Tony?KH: Tony and I have had a lot in common just in terms of how much trouble we’ve gotten into throughout our careers. But we’ve also done business together. Tony helped get Kevin Harvick Inc. started and off on the right foot and actually drove our first Xfinity race in 2004 at Charlotte.

PM: “The amount of trouble we’ve gotten into.” Have you ever been in anger-management therapy, as Tony has? KH: I never was in anger-management therapy. I would just come home and get my ass ripped by my wife.

PM: You had a built-in anger-management therapist, so to speak?KH: Pretty much (laughing.) My wife can be very blunt with me. She

used to work on the P.R. side of the sport, and she probably spoke to me until she was blue in the face, trying to make me understand why I did or didn’t need to do something differently. That’s the healthy part of our relationship. She sees a lot of things one way, I see a lot of things another way, and then we come to a common ground. It only took about ten years.

PM: Come back to Tony.KH: Tony’s extraordinary. I tell him all the time that he’s like Rain Man—the figure in the film, “Rain Man”? You’d think that Tony Stewart would be vocal at our team meetings, but he’s actually the guy who sits back and listens and listens, saying very little. Then three months later, he’ll give you back the whole conversation almost verbatim. He remembers everything. He’s very smart. PM: And imaginative, as well? You see this in his driving, when he’ll often make original, unorthodox moves.KH: I think that’s why he and Gene work so well together. They

The Family Harvick… all in coooo shades.

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INTERVIEW // HOW TO BE KEVIN HARVICK

both have no problem being unorthodox, and remember, Tony’s the guy who’s put together a dirt-track team, a Cup team and sprint-car team, as well as owning a race track or two—and he’s made all of them work.

PM: Who’s a better test driver, you or Tony? KH: Tony would rather not practice. I’m the guy who’s going to be spending more time with the crew chief talking about things we want to try. But Tony’s as good as anybody in setting up a car and getting the feel like he wants.

PM: How much of the technical stuff do you understand, given the advanced technology of today’s racecars? KH: As far as running the simulation programs and that kind of stuff, it’s way over my head. But I think I work well with my engineers, because I’m a reliable and clear source of information for them as to where the car is loose or tight, whether it’s entry, to the middle,

thru the middle, early exit, late exit, high or low, bump here or there … which helps explain the spikes in the data they’re looking at.

PM: On a scale of one to ten, how much has the level of sophistication in Cup cars grown? KH: The simulation process really started in 2009 with NASCAR’s new rules limiting testing. Everybody just went and spent a ton of money on engineering programs, so that you could run things in the shop on the computers.

PM: And from what fields were the experts in these areas drawn? KH: Well, I had a kid several years ago who was a rocket scientist. Most of these guys have Ph.D.’s. But I have to say that if you can find a lead engineer who knows something about racing, you’re going to be way ahead of the game, because sometimes that book-smart engineer can’t relate; something may look good on the computer, but you have to have that

common ground of common sense.

PM: Coming back to your championship and the element of consistency, how does a driver get an education in how to rein-in what may be the excitement of the moment? KH: A lot of that just comes with experience. Here’s a background story that I think is important. In

’92, I got my first chance to drive a late-model stock car, and basically, if I wrecked it, I didn’t get to race again until we scrounged up enough money for repairs. I got to race only seven races my first year, because I crashed every week. In ’93 we broke one fender and won the late-model championship in Bakersfield, Ca., probably because I’d learned that if I wrecked, I wasn’t

They call him "Happy Harvick."

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going to be able to race the next week. I also realized that when you don’t have the fastest car, you have to minimize the mistakes you make and just wait for the other guy to make more mistakes than you.

PM: You’re talking about the discipline to see things long-term?KH: You need to know that if you’re five laps into a race, and the guys around you are running balls to the

wall, then, you’re putting yourself at a pretty high risk if you stay with them. Or if the car’s really loose, you need to know that you should run it only as fast as it will go, that you’ll get through that stint, do a pit stop and tighten the car up, and then hopefully you’ll go faster.

PM: How difficult is it to retrieve your rhythm after a pit stop or a yellow?

INTERVIEW // HOW TO BE KEVIN HARVICK HARDCARDACCESS.COM

KH: Good question. You try to get the most out of your car, and a lot of that is just paying attention to the racetrack, knowing what’s working. In your head, you’re constantly making adjustments. Your brain is firing constantly as you’re doing lap after lap, and a lot of this is remembering what you did the lap before, and also what worked well in practice.

PM: But is retaining this focus difficult? Does it become instinctual, automatic?KH: It’s really not difficult, because that’s the part I enjoy, that constant thought process of adjusting and adapting. You know you need to get better with each lap, and the sooner you relay information to your crew, the faster they can plug that information into the computer to make you run better. HC

The Dark Night of Jimmie JohnsonThe Dark Night of Jimmie Johnson

GARAGE AREA CONFIDENTIAL

by TED WEST

RACING A DIRT BIKE WITH A BROKEN KNEE... IT TAKES A CERTAIN KIND OF GUY

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Early

in Jimmie Johnson’s dirt-bike racing career, he crashed hard and broke his knee. If you’ve ridden dirt bikes … it happens. But he’d had a white-hot season, winning and winning like it was in the script. He was so far ahead in his 60-c.c. division, all he had to do to win the championship was complete one lap of the last race.

But a broken knee is like a cracked

tooth—bad news! Did Jimmie Johnson want to win bad enough to race with a broken knee?

The race went off, and off went Jimmie. He rode hard, broken knee in a cast, and won the championship.

He was eight years old.

MADE OF NAILSTake a look at Jimmie Johnson. The pictures don’t lie. He’s a solid, smiling, well-balanced man who enjoys what he does. He’s got an easy sense of humor, and if you

listen in on his radio transmissions to crew chief Chad Knaus, he’s as down to earth—and off-color—as you and your best friend when nobody’s listening.

He’s even been heard to say he’s bothered by his own personality. He thinks he’s too vanilla to fit in with the elbows-out racers around him … he thinks he’s not baaad enough.

Maybe. He had a good time growing up in El Cajon, outside San Diego on the edge of the desert, surfing and racing dirt bikes. His

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Big Bill And The International Audition

There will never be another promoter who thought as big as Big Bill France. In 1962, he arranged for one of NASCAR’s top teams to audition several of the world’s greatest drivers for the upcoming Daytona 500. They included American F1 driver Dan Gurney, future Indy winner and two-time World Champion Jimmy Clark, and up-and-coming Brit David Hobbs, today an NBC motorsports commentator. “After the 1962 Daytona 3 Hours,” Hobbs remembers, “Bill France put me in a Holman-Moody Ford Galaxie.” He remembers turning laps around

over in his California way, figures what it’ll take to be fast—then does it. It’s only won him six Cup Championships. If he could make it seven—like the King and Ironhead Dale—he might have something. Say that to him, and he just smiles.

Yebbut when he’s behind the wheel….

It takes a certain kind of eight-year-old to race a dirt bike with a broken knee. You need nails in your blood—even if you don’t strut

around the garages beating your chest as some do.

In my experience, Jimmie is like another California racer—the great Rick Mears. When Rick was at his best, no open-wheel oval racer could match him, not Foyt, not even Mario. Yet talking to Rick, he had no hint of baaad. He wasn’t fast because he was tough or mean or shaved twice a day—he was fast, because he knew more than anyone about being fast!

mom and dad did everything they could to give him and his two younger brothers a happy upbringing. If it meant a broken knee or two … he was a racer! It takes talent to be that good a parent.

He grew up being a good guy, and in a room full of hardened pro drivers, that only goes so far. You want to be a little baaad. It’s good for the home team. Instead, Jimmie just sort of looks things

GARAGE AREA CONFIDENTIAL THE DARK NIGHT OF JIMMIE JOHNSON HARDCARDACCESS.COM

ECHOES ANDBACKFIRES

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155 mph, which he feels justifiably proud of to this day, since the pole speed ended up at just under 157. “Jimmy drove the car but didn’t show any interest in doing it, and I guess they felt Dan Gurney would be a far better bet than me, which he would have been.” Gurney qualified a strong seventh for the 500, just behind H-M regular Nelson Stacy and well ahead of team leader Fred Lorenzen. Don’t feel too bad for Hobbs, though. In 1976, France got him a Daytona 500 ride, and he led two laps.

He’d beat you smiling like your tennis partner.

Johnson is like Mears in another unique way. Only one or two gifted drivers at any one time are capable of setting up a car “loose,” then driving it out to the limit without crashing. As a safety margin, everyone else dials the car in a little “tight.” It serves as a warning when they’re getting close to the limit. If the car begins to push … they’re there! Taking a loose car to the limit, though, only a brilliant driver knows he’s there. But a loose car at the limit is “free.” It runs faster, because there’s no tire scrub, no friction slowing it down.

Like Rick Mears, Jimmie Johnson prefers his car “free” at the limit.

Last year, when the 2014 rules eliminated a standard front ride-height, it changed the cars’ quantum balance. They tended to be tighter—and one of Johnson’s prime advantages, running loose at the limit, vanished. He likes being a little loose, it’s faster—but only if you’re a genius who can read it before you go into the fence.

HARDCARDACCESS.COM

At 200 mph, it’s a problem.

IN DARKNESSYear after year, by nearly every measure, Jimmie Johnson has been brilliant. He swept Cup in 2006-2010, then won again in 2013. By the end of 2014, in 471 Cup races, he’d won 70 … one win every 6.7 races. He’s gained 33 poles, 292 top-ten finishes. Between 2006 and 2013, he was Driver of the Year five times.

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rule was a double-whammy for Johnson. He and crew chief Knaus had to concentrate hard right through to the end of 2013 winning the 2013 Cup. At the same time, some teams began early developing the new 2014 package. Johnson and Knaus were three or four months behind some like Rodney Childers, Kevin Harvick’s crew chief at Stewart-Haas Racing.

“That very sharp man,” Johnson says with typical generosity, “had some time to experiment and find answers. Hats off to him—nice job.”

But Johnson and Knaus had to do all their 2014 development work for the very different new rules during the 2014 races. Their results showed it. They didn’t win until the twelfth race, in May.

Shameless.But the trouble with brilliance

is, when it slips, everyone sees. In 2014, Johnson won four times but finished 11th in the standings—the first season he’s ever been out of the top ten. Is he in a “slump?” (Derek Jeter had them, why not Johnson?) Or is it something more?

The 2014 front ride-height

GARAGE AREA CONFIDENTIAL THE DARK NIGHT OF JIMMIE JOHNSON HARDCARDACCESS.COM

At the same time, SHR drivers Kurt Busch and lightning-fast Kevin Harvick, together with Penske drivers Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, had excellent speed from the start. Despite early pit-work mistakes, Harvick’s constant high speed led straight to the 2014 Cup.

“We went through a few months not getting good results with what had worked for years,” Jimmie says. “We had to go off in a whole new direction. We’re still not 100-percent happy, but we’re a lot closer.

When Johnson finally broke through to win at Charlotte, and at Dover the next week, it felt good. But the new Chase format changes everything. “The way things are,” Johnson says, “If you win, you can transfer straight through to Homestead. That’s the only race that counts. Sure, we were happy to win and have a lock on being in the Chase. But you can gamble more on any weekend and not be too worried about losing championship points.”

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LISTENING INSo how good is “good?” We decided to check. Listening to radio transmissions between drivers and crew chiefs in practice tells a lot about where their cars’ development is. More than that, it can tell everything about the driver.

We transcribed transmissions from numerous drivers and tracks during mid-2014. A lot of it was predictable. Their cars were loose or tight … “damn near undriveable.” And there was outright despair:

“We’re just nowhere near where we need to be.” Dialing in a raging 3300-lb. 2014 Cup car that’s trying to fly into the wall at 200 mph is nervous-making.

But then we listened to Johnson. Let us quote just one example. It came towards the end of a

practice session at the Black Lady, Darlington. Johnson was driving at the time, there were no pauses—the whole thing took just 28.4 seconds. Listen:

“Entry to 1 climbing the hill to the wall, it was getting freer the longer I ran—turning down off of 2 and down through the exit of 2, started

off good—it was getting tighter as I ran—entry of 3 was fine, the center of 3 and 4 was getting tighter as I ran—and then the exit of 4 started to tighten up, which was fine, because I started a little free—it started to come to me as I ran.”

Bang-bang-bang. Astronaut cool, definitive … Apollo 48 reporting to

In 2014, Johnson had bad luck and a lot of very low finishes, but he’s relentlessly philosophical. “It’s part of the industry. We’ve had many peaks and valleys. You learn what you’re made of, what your team is made of, when you’re down in the valley. It’s a roller-coaster ride.”

Richard Petty likes to say, when things start going bad, if you keep working hard, your fate will change. But Johnson qualifies that.

“Hard work is really important. But technology is what counts in our sport—you can work real hard in the wrong area and not get anywhere. You’ve got to be smart about it. You have to be working down the right road.”

GARAGE AREA CONFIDENTIAL THE DARK NIGHT OF JIMMIE JOHNSON HARDCARDACCESS.COM

Apollo 48 to Houston— the sky is falling...

Crew chief Chad Knaus, left, the man who calls Jimmie’s shots.

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simultaneously, reducing them to straightforward, clear expression. Knaus knows exactly how the car’s dynamic balance changes in each of four corners in the present conditions. And it all goes into a log, to be consulted whenever it’s needed down the line.

Johnson was in a valley in 2014, but don’t expect him to stay there long. Greatness is fickle. Talent can go into eclipse—especially in the nightmarishly complex technological warfare of Cup. And when someone gets an advantage, not everyone catches up quickly, not even Jimmie Johnson.

But already, he is a timeless champion. We asked him if he might ever be a modern version of the King. Will he be another revered, good-guy champion? But automatically—reverently—he backed right away.

“In his era, you could see where Richard’s winning ways, his connection with the fans, put NASCAR on the map. But I can’t walk in his shoes—I’d just be ‘slopping around’ in them. It’d be interesting to see how he would

fare if he’d been born into my generation. I don’t think I would’ve been very good if I’d been born into his generation. But he is personally

responsible for making NASCAR mainstream today.”

Spoken just like Jimmie Johnson. HC

Houston that the sky is falling. I couldn’t do that. You probably

couldn’t, either. And some of the best drivers in Cup can’t.

LEGACYThe pictures don’t lie. Jimmie Johnson is that good guy you see smiling at the camera. He doesn’t need to bully or rage or whine—even if he doesn’t know it himself.

But in the pictures—or talking to him—you don’t see the Jimmie Johnson he becomes behind the wheel. Determined, analytical, goal-oriented, with driving skills and calmness under stress that is beyond imagination.

At work, he has intimidating clarity. He records what the car does from entry to middle to exit in each of four corners … not once but progressively, modifying his impression as it goes through a long set of ten-tenths laps.

It begins to explain why Johnson is the most prolific Cup champion in NASCAR today. He’s a driving machine—a computer tracking multiple strings of logic

GARAGE AREA CONFIDENTIAL

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We’ve all heard the refrain—Formula One engines are way more advanced than Cup engines. Yes, and the exalted few who design and build them are our betters.

If so, then, why are so many Formula One engine engineers bringing their skills to NASCAR … and staying here, fully challenged.

HardCardAccess.com decided it’s time to find out. We talked to

race-engine chiefs at Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota, plus the head of Hendrick Motorsports’ engine shop, which built the mighty motors that propelled Kevin Harvick to the 2014 Sprint Cup Championship. What we discovered is, rules-dictated Old-School architecture aside, in terms of thermal dynamics and the laws of physics, NASCAR engines

achieve analogously the same upper limits as F1 engines.

“I couldn’t disagree more with the misnomer that NASCAR and the engines that we race are ‘low-tech,’” says Toyota Racing Development President and General Manager David Wilson, who has worked on engines for almost every type of racing, including Indy 500 winners. “We

say we’re building the highest ‘low-tech’ engine in existence.”

“It can’t be just coincidental that more and more Formula One engineers are migrating to our sport,” says Wilson, who counts several F1 men on his own team. “And the very first thing they say is how much more sophisticated NASCAR is, how much more they enjoy the challenge, than their

By George Damon Levy

THE WORLD’S HIGHEST “LOW-TECH” ENGINE

PUSHRODS AND THROTTLE-BODIES MAY BE OLD SCHOOL—BUT NOBODY TOLD THE ENGINE GENIES IN NASCAR…

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original perception was.”But if you’re afraid it sounds like

Cup racing is getting French-ified, it’s the opposite. “When we were in IndyCar,” Wilson says, “and you surveyed the parking lot of our team members in Costa Mesa, you would see a lot of … people call them ‘rice-rockets’—super-high-revving motorcycles. But I swear, if you look outside our NASCAR engine shop where our F1 guys are

today, you see a lot of very highly tuned muscle cars!”

STARTING FROM SCRATCH—AND SCRATCHING HARDWithout question, the strict NASCAR-mandated engine architecture is a little, shall we say, “nostalgic.” Given a clean sheet of paper, no aggressively laid-forward engine guy would ever choose

a cast-iron, pushrod, steel-valve V8 breathing through a throttle body, a form of fuel injection more commonly associated with ’85 Camaros.

NASCAR rules require these cost-controlling antediluvian throwbacks, and NASCAR polices their presence jealously, dictating Stone-Age devices like cast-iron blocks and steel valve springs. Let’s just say, if NASCAR decided to put on a football game, there’d be no underinflated footballs….

By NASCAR rule, the manufacturers supply the foundational parts: engine blocks, cylinder heads, intake manifolds, and what’s called the “central valley.” The engine builders, like Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Yates Engines, do the rest. That means, supplying their own cams and pistons. Visit any of them and you’ll be shocked at the number of CNC milling machines, all making specialized engine parts by the barrelful.

“We do the foundational parts,” says GM Manager of NASCAR

Engineering and Program Management Pat Suhy, “then the teams do all the reciprocating and valve-train stuff.”

Though major aspects of the engine are tightly constrained, the competition is still world-class. It’s as if the UFC put Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier, and Anderson Silva in a three-foot octagon, and said, “Okay, gentlemen, let’s have a clean fight.” There wouldn’t be a lot of haymakers, but all the same, you’d see one hell of a dance party.

IT ALL STARTS WITH HORSEPOWERUnder such strict rules, then, how do engine guys gain an advantage in NASCAR?

There are four main areas. Two of these you’d guess off the top of your head: power and reliability. The other two take some ’splaining. They are engine weight (yes, how much the engine weighs, and where that weight is located), and what everyone in NASCAR refers to simply, but cryptically, as “thermal abilities.”

HARDCARDACCESS.COM

Jeff Andrews, Hendrick Motorsports’ master Chevy-builder.

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The pursuit of more power is never-ending. But for safety and competition reasons, NASCAR has made it difficult for any engine to achieve much more than 725 hp—a little more than half that for restrictor-plate tracks. The engine guys can still look for more power, and believe us, they do, but gone are the days when someone might suddenly find 10 or 20 in a chunk.

“We’re honestly looking for a horsepower,” says Ford Racing Engine Supervisor Dave Simon.

“If you’re working on a restrictor-plate engine, something in the neighborhood of a one-percent gain is huge,” explains Jeff Andrews, Director of Engine Operations at Hendrick Motorsports. “If you’re talking a 420 or 430 horsepower engine; you’re looking for one or two horsepower as a significant gain.

“As for an unrestricted engine, you hope for maybe a percent, a percent and a half. Somewhere in the seven-to-ten horsepower range would be a very good year.”

And how much does a

THE WORLD’S HIGHEST “LOW-TECH” ENGINE HARDCARDACCESS.COM

In the right hands, Chevy’s R07 V8 makes major horsepower.

horsepower cost? Nobody will say … but an educated guess puts it at around a million dollars!

Most point to valve springs as the biggest limiter to even greater performance. But today that’s kind of a moot point because of the “gear rule” NASCAR initiated

a few years ago. Teams are given a choice of two rear-end ratios at each track, which limits engine speed to under 10,000 rpm. Before the rule was implemented, NASCAR engines were routinely turning ten- and eleven-thousand rpm.

That’s right … pushrod engines turning well over 10,000 rpm!

One of the ways to be successful in such a constricted world is to build every part to incredibly high standards—another way in which NASCAR engines are like F1 engines. Every surface is mirror precise. As a result, every engine ends up being within a horsepower or so of every other engine.

“Going back 15 years,” says Simon, “there used to be the ‘good’ engine, right? And you saved that engine for special occasions. Now the engines go out the door within a few horsepower of each other. And they all come back that way.” Meaning that when they dyno engines after a race—and they do—they’re delivering the same power they did when the green flag dropped….

WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY RELIABILITYTo finish first … first, you gotta finish.

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Especially today, one bad finish can destroy a season. Of the top eight drivers in the 2014 Championship, Jeff Gordon had the best average finish by a wide margin. But due to a disastrous finish late in the Chase, he ended up sixth in the final standings. No one can afford a bad finish at the wrong time, and in Cup, testing to ensure zero engine failures is furious and unending.

“You usually work on the performance side first,” says Andrews. “Then you follow that up with making sure the durability matching that performance gain is where you need it to be. That really goes on 365 days a year.”

WEIGHT, WEIGHT, DO TELL MEYou’re probably saying to yourself, how could engine weight possibly make a big difference? Especially when in 2015 NASCAR dictates a minimum weight of 3,250 lb. for the car, and un-ballasted Cup cars are under the minimum anyway!

Easy—center of gravity.

The center of gravity—where the concentration of mass of the vehicle is located—has a critical influence on handling. The engine, of course, is one of the biggest single masses in the car. Manufacturers spend a lot of time reducing the overall weight of the engine and shifting as much of its weight as low as possible in the engine.

“Virtually every year, we had a discreet project strictly to lower the overall center of gravity of our engine mass,” says Wilson. “When you go to places like Martinsville or Loudon—these flat tracks and short ovals—it’s amazing what Cg will do.”

Pounds are like gold. Every ounce is highly valued.

“There is no weight reduction small enough that the car guys will tell you it’s not worth doing,” says Simon.

Because unballasted NASCAR cars are under the weight minimum, reducing weight has two benefits. You not only get it out of the engine, but you can then

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THE WORLD’S HIGHEST “LOW-TECH” ENGINE HARDCARDACCESS.COM

In the Penske Fusions, Ford’s FR9 can be unbeatable on mid-size tracks.

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add that much more ballast in the places that most help handling.

CAUGHT ANY GOOD THERMALS LATELY?Last, and in ways the most intriguing, is so-called “thermal ability”: how hot the engine can run and still live for 500 miles. This is often the difference between winning and being “first loser.”

Let’s say Denny Hamlin’s and Brad Keselowski’s engines are both developing identical power, but the Ford guys figure out how to make Brad’s engine survive running ten degrees hotter.

Advantage: Brad. They can tape up more of the grille opening on his car.

“At the end of the day,” says Ford’s Simon, “it’s all about the fastest race car. It doesn’t matter if it’s horsepower doing it, or aerodynamics doing it—it’s just having the

fastest car. The hotter you can run the engine, the more tape you can put on the front end—and the more downforce, and less drag, it makes.

“Everything that we can do to allow that engine to run hotter is going to be an advantage to the car.”

FORMULA ONE AND NASCAR … CLOSER THAN YOU THINK“When someone says there’s as much technology in these engines as there is in F1, I would say, yes, absolutely,” says GM’s Suhy. “That’s because the same kind of work you have to do to make an F1 engine spin 18,000 RPM with small pistons, short, lightweight connecting rods, with exotic materials … we have to do with steel connecting rods, fairly conventional intake and exhaust valves, and conventional valve springs.”

And Suhy isn’t basing that

on his heart; it’s pure engine-guy science:

“The reciprocating stress on a connecting rod and piston in a NASCAR engine at 9500 rpm,” he explains, “is equivalent to an F1 engine at 18,000 rpm.”

“In the end, it amounts to thermal dynamics and

physics,” says Toyota’s Wilson. “That is the same for Formula One as it is for NASCAR. And from an engineer’s perspective, the same challenge exists—the materials are just a little different.” HC

THE WORLD’S HIGHEST “LOW-TECH” ENGINE

Dave Wilson honchoes

Toyota Racing Development’s

NASCAR hopes.

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HARDCARDACCESS.COM

Cale Yarborough was as tough as they come, once flying over the railing at Darlington, another time walking away from a skydiving accident when his chute failed to deploy until he was 200 feet from pay dirt. But another airborne adventure made even Yarborough nervous. In 1977, while winning the second of three consecutive Cup championships, he mentioned to his Junior Johnson crew that he wouldn’t mind having a pet bear. A few days later, the shop called; come get your bear. He thought they were joking, but flying there in his twin-engine plane, there was his bear! Thoughtfully, they’d tied it up securely with plastic rope for the flight

C.Y. AND THE BEAR

ECHOES ANDBACKFIRESPersonalities and pithy remarks, hardcore and hilarious, from NASCAR’s long and luminous past.

3home. Well, at the halfway point of the flight to South Carolina, Cale

in the front seat and the bear in the back, the bear began

gnawing through the ropes. “I started sweating,” Cale

admits to thatsracin.com’s Tom Higgins. “By the time I managed to land the plane and taxi to where people were waiting with a cage, the bear was down to the last strands and almost free. Can you imagine having a wild bear loose in the cockpit of an airplane!” Once again, Cale walked away without a scratch. George D. Levy

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PHOTO-GENICS…

Fast as that! Sprint Cup blurs past in the Phoenix CampingWorld.com 500.

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PHOTOGRAPHER'S PICKS HARDCARDACCESS.COM

Grandstanding at the Auto Club 400, Fontana, CA.

Smithfield Space Rangers service Aric Almirola at Fontana, CA’s Auto Club 400.

The agony of victory: Kevin Harvick’s epic victory burnout trashed his Chevy at Las Vegas.

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PHOTOGRAPHER'S PICKS HARDCARDACCESS.COM

Aric Almirola hugs the front-straight wall in the Auto Club 400 in California.

Rush Hour. “Smoke” leads the Sprint Cup Commute.Planet Las Vegas: The Sprint Cup field blasts by at the Kobalt 400.

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SAM HORNISH’S

“SECOND CHANCE”

Sam Hornish Jr. doesn’t enjoy taking it easy, never has. The minute he begins winning at something, he’s ready to try something new—something that’s a

bigger challenge. It’s exactly what his father taught him from the moment he started racing.

And it’s a good thing Sam is in a hurry—he got a bit of a late start. His first go-kart race didn’t come until he was 11. That may not sound “late” to you, but compared with most of today’s professional racers, it’s ancient.

Fortunately, the young kart racer from Defiance, Ohio, was a quick study. In no time, his father was driving him all over the U.S. and Canada. By the time he was 17, he’d won the Canadian Grand Championship and twice won the World Karting Association’s U.S. Grand National Championship.

By age 22, he had successfully moved up through Formula Ford and the Toyota Atlantic series, to win two consecutive IndyCar Championships for Panther Racing. He was hired by the elite Team Penske in 2004. Two years later, he won his third IndyCar Championship, after winning the biggest open-wheel race of all, the Indy 500.

But following the long-established pattern instilled by his dad, in 2007, he was interested in trying his hand at Cup racing, driving a Team Penske NASCAR stocker. In 2008, he finished second in the Sprint Cup Rookie of

THE HARD CARD INTERVIEW // NO. 3

THE INDY 500 CHAMPION RETURNS TO CUP FULL-TIME…

… sitting in my new go-kart in the back of the Astrovan … pretending I was racing.

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INTERVIEW // SECOND CHANCE

the Year standings. But NASCAR was proving a more serious challenge for him than the other series he’d raced in. He worked hard, trying to learn a new and very different kind of race driving. He spent 2012 and 2013 in the Xfinity series, moving to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2014. In 107 Xfinity starts, he has won three races, scored 32 Top-Fives, and 57 Top-Tens. After 131 starts in Cup, he has earned three Top-Fives and nine Top-Tens. But unlike his experience in other forms of racing, he has yet to win in Cup … so far.

In 2015, the easy-going, soft-spoken driver is getting what he himself calls a “second chance” in Cup. He will be racing full-time for Richard Petty Motorsports in the #9. After having so much success in other kinds of pro racing, Hard Card caught up with Sam to look into his background, his triumphs, his Sprint Cup struggles, and what he plans to do differently this time around.

HC Tell us a little about your beginnings.SH I’ve been interested in racing ever since I can remember. I always had a fascination with cars and big trucks. I either wanted to be a racecar driver or drive a truck. [He laughs.] You know, throw trash around ... drive a really big truck … stuff like that.

HC: And how did your interest turn to racing?SH: I’m the first in my family that actually raced legitimately, but my mom and dad are the biggest race fans you’ll ever run into. On their third or fourth date, they went to an Indy-car race at the Milwaukee Mile, where my mom grew up. When she was eight months pregnant with me, they went to their first Indy 500. When I was a kid and we went on vacation, everything always revolved around going to races. We’d go to a race, visit family in the week between, then go to another race the following weekend.

The Racing Sam Hornishes, Jr. and Sr., above and below.

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HARDCARDACCESS.COM

HC: You said you got a late start in your racing.SH: I got my first race in a kart on my 11th birthday. A lot of the guys in NASCAR were racing when they were five or six. That weekend, we were visiting my grandmother in Milwaukee, and we went to Six Flags—but all I was concerned about for the four and a half hours driving home to Ohio was sitting in my new go-kart in the back of the Astrovan. I got in it and pretended I was racing the whole way home!

HC: How often did you get to race?SH: It was meant to be a father-and-son activity, at first, something we did a couple of times a month through the summer. But every time I won something, my dad would want me to try something harder. We went to dirt ovals, then asphalt road courses. As soon as I won, we’d do something different. We were going to bigger and bigger tracks. In a couple of years, we were racing 35 weekends a year! By the time I was done with karts, I’d traveled all over the United States

and Canada. I’d even gone to the Go-Kart World Championships in France and Italy!

HC: How did you make the transition from karts to cars? SH: At that point, everything I did was kind of a road to Indianapolis. I did Formula Ford, then Toyota Formula Atlantic. Then I got an opportunity to run a short schedule of four races in an Indy car—but one of the four races was the Indy 500. We were short on sponsorship, but I did well enough that we turned that short schedule into eight races. I only missed one race that season. And now I had my first real paying job as a driver. I won the IndyCar Championship a couple of times, in 2001 and 2002, but after doing well for a few years, winning Indy and a third IndyCar Championship, I got interested in trying stock cars.

HC: It’s a very different kind of driving. Tell us about that.SH: In the 2007 season, I ran over 40 races—the full IndyCar series,

Sam Jr. and his dad … waaay back in the beginning.

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plus a lot of Nationwide races and a few in Cup. I also did the 24 Hours of Daytona. I wanted to challenge myself again. [He laughs.] And in NASCAR, I found a really big challenge!

HC: How big?SH: Stock cars, with their small tires and big weight, are a lot different from open-wheel cars It takes a lot more finesse to drive a stock car. In an Indy car, the handling is sort of point-and-shoot, but in a stock car, all the guys have learned from years and years of racing Saturday nights on dirt and asphalt exactly what they can get away with. I had to try to learn all that real fast. [He groans.] With everybody watching! But I just had to take it as a learning experience and move on.

HC: Describe the differences driving stock cars.SH: Well, with an Indy car, the driver can make all kinds of adjustments inside the car. That’s not true in a Cup car. And I thought, if I wasn’t successful

in a Cup car, it would look like a judgment on me and on Indy-car driving, in general. So I felt like I had to push things a lot more than I probably needed to. I paid the consequences for that. I was being too aggressive.

HC: How so?SH: Well, say, my car is a 25th-place car today, but I try to drive it up to tenth to make something happen—and then wreck doing it. You don’t have the adjustments inside the car, and I can’t just

“carry” the car, because I don’t have the tools to make it better. In Cup sometimes, you just have to say, bringing a 25th-place car home 23rd, well, you’ve had a good day. It’s better than having a tenth-place car, trying to lead the race, but wrecking out in fifth place. That is my fault! You’ve got to pick your day, and if the car’s good, make the most of it. But you can only learn more by staying in the race, by logging laps.

HC: A hard lesson for a charger to accept. What else have you learned in Cup?SH: An awful lot of making a car faster in Cup is pure race strategy … taking two tires instead of four when you can get away with it in order to not lose spots, that kind of thing. What can you do with tire-pressure changes, for instance, to tune the car without lengthening your pit stops for chassis adjustments. The teamwork aspect is so different compared to Indy cars. Pit crews and crew-chief strategy are just so important in Cup.

INTERVIEW // SECOND CHANCE HARDCARDACCESS.COM

Toyota Formula Atlantic aimed Sam straight at the Indy 500.

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HC: Compared to Indy cars, how do you enjoy driving a Cup car?SH: I’ve always liked the tracks where your tires begin to fall off a little and you really have to back up all your corners. A stock car has a lot of that—I like the problems it presents. Pocono is a great example. You have three very different corners, and you’re never going to be really good in all three, so how do you balance getting good in two of them with minimizing what you have to give up in that third one? A lot of guys get frustrated with that, but you just have to pick your battles and make the best of it.

HC: Do you think you’re ready to go back to Cup full-time?SH: It’s killing me, the waiting! Once we get five races in—whether it’s really good or really bad—at least we’ll know what direction we’ve got to work in. The cars will handle a bit differently this year with the horsepower that’s been taken out for 2015. I’ve already had one test with the new rules

package, at Charlotte. But it was about 37 degrees, so there was a lot of downforce, and with only four cars running, it didn’t get slick because of a lot of rubber build-up. The grip stayed pretty good. But I feel like I have a good idea what I need to do not only to help the team be better, but to help myself be better, too.

And when you’ve got two drivers whose driving styles are pretty close together, two drivers who are on the same page … and Aric [Almirola] and I are … you can point the tuning of both cars in the same direction. The information for one car can help the other and pull the whole team forward. It’s a promising situation for Richard Petty Motorsports, and I’m really up for that challenge. If you see a couple of gray hairs on my head, remember, I’m only 35 … the gray hairs are mostly from my kids! HC

INTERVIEW // SECOND CHANCE

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