NASCAR Winston Cup Teleconference Moments

Chad Knaus, crew chief on the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet

Photo courtesy of NASCAR Winston Cup Series.

“You always have to shoot from the hip.”

“Different situations breed more situations.”

A Zoomster question from Dwight:

“Everybody asks, what’s your strategy for the event? What are you going to do? How are you going to attack it? Honestly, I really pay attention to races three years prior, three races prior to the race coming up. I watch those races and see how things unfold see how things come up, just so you’ve got different scenarios. But you cannot set a game plan in a Winston Cup race because it never works out the way you want it to. You always have to shoot from the hip. That’s one thing I feel we do very well. We strategize as the race is unfolding and try to stay on top of what’s going on and work on different scenarios.

“Different situations breed more situations. If you’re running outside of the top five say if you’re running first through fifth, you have one basic set of rules that you abide by. A caution comes out and you’re well into a fuel run, you come in and pit. If you’re 10th through 20th, you’re in a limbo stage. OK, do I do what the leaders do or do I do what the guys are going to do behind me. You’re stuck in the middle trying to make a decision at that point in time.

“And then from 20th to 43rd, those guys back there are going to do whatever it possibly takes to get back up to the front. If the caution comes out and the leaders don’t pit, they’re pitting, putting on tires, just trying to mess everything up. That’s putting a lot of people in a catbird seat. We did that at Loudon, being able to top off every time a caution came out, put tires on and go. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.