Tech Q&A: Dennis Connor
By Dave Rodman, Turner Sports Interactive
August 12, 2001
11:14 AM EDT (1514 GMT)
Dennis Connor has teamed with Jack Sprague to win a pair of championships in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Since the start of the 1996 season, the veteran Hendrick Motorsports crew chief has engineered 22 victories and 18 Bud Poles with Sprague.
Connor has an extensive background as a chief mechanic, including a long stint in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. His tenure with Sprague has attained many highs.
A freak coil wire problem at Nashville Superspeedway on Aug. 10 ended a record streak of 11 straight races in which the Spring Lake, Mich., driver led at least one lap.
But the No. 24 NetZero Platinum Chevrolet driver is still in the middle of an intense NCTS point race that had 75 points covering the top-three drivers after the Nashville round.
Before the Federated Auto Parts 200 at Nashville, Connor sat down with NASCAR.com’s Dave Rodman to discuss competing on concrete race tracks. The NCTS has done so at Nashville, Bristol and Dover and with Winston Cup and NASCAR Busch Series races coming up in the next month at Bristol (Aug. 24-25) and Dover (Sept. 22-23), the timing was right.
Q: What is your take, from a mechanic’s side, on concrete racetracks? Are they good for a change, should there be more of them or should they be done away with?
A: My own personal opinion is that every place that we race needs to be concrete. The reason is that the surface doesn’t change, the tires don’t seem to give up -- though Goodyear’s got something going on with their tires now that they don’t seem to go away or change anyway -- they’re pretty doggoned good. By and large, I would prefer to race on concrete all the time. The weather erosion doesn’t seem to be as bad on concrete and bumps don’t seem to occur in concrete like it does on asphalt. Pretty much, I like concrete.
Q: What changes, right from the start, does a concrete surface demand?
A: Several years ago when we were racing at Bristol we came up with some deals on shocks -- particularly rear shocks -- that each and every time we’ve been to a concrete race track seems to be the hot tip. They worked at Dover and they seem to be working pretty good here. I think the hardest thing to get a hold of on a concrete race track is, indeed, the shock package. We were terrible at Bristol with Jack for the first couple of years and then all of a sudden, when we found out what was wrong with the shock deal, we’ve been good. So I think shocks are very important.
Q: How much does the concrete surface’s aspects change with variations in cloud cover, temperature and rubber buildup -- and what do you have to do to compensate?
A: Thus far, with what we’ve been running on this race track I haven’t seen any changes at all that we needed. Maybe we have an exceptional handling package for concrete race tracks -- I don’t know -- maybe it’s exceptionally bad. But at Bristol, Dover and here I haven’t seen where the surface changes whatsoever -- it’s just there.
Q: What is the single biggest set-up adjustment you would use in terms of dealing with a concrete surface?
A: We really don’t change very much. I don’t expect to make many changes when I am at a concrete race track. We could be teetotal junk and go to hell on the first turn of the first lap. But when it is race time, I’d be surprised if we would change a pound of air pressure one way or the other in the tires or more than a round or a round-and-a-half of bite.
Q: Typically, how is tire wear on a concrete surface?
A: I think that depends on the concrete you’re on. But I also see that going back to this new tire that Goodyear has got everybody on in all the divisions. They don’t slow down and they don’t seem to wear very much. With this being a green race track when we got here, a month-and-a-half since anybody’s run on it, I expected a lot of tire wear right off the bat. We got 77 laps on a set of tires and they’re wore down a half a 32nd. Hell, you could run the whole race on the same set of tires.
Q: How has Jack adapted to the new Goodyear tire package?
A: He is extremely good on the tires -- he loves ‘em. Where so many of the guys in this division and particularly in the Winston Cup division are always complaining about they haven’t found out what you have to do to make these tires work, we haven’t done anything to make ‘em work. We bolted ‘em on and Jack said it was absolutely great. He said you’re not squirrelly, you’re not loose getting in (to the corners) and you’ve got plenty of grip. Maybe it’s the driver, but we haven’t done anything different than we’ve always done -- but maybe we were ready for this tire before we got this tire.
Q: What do the NASCAR race teams use to inflate their tires? Is it a special gas or the air that would be put in a street tire? Also, who mounts the tires for the teams?
A: We all bleed out the compressed air and put nitrogen in them because that is a gas that is very, very low on water content. During the course of a run, if you were running compressed air you would probably build up more than 50 percent more (air pressure) than we do with nitrogen. At times, I’ve played around and looked for another gas to inflate the tires with that would be even better yet and there is another gas we came up with and we tried it. It did really build up a lot less, but there was something about the fact that it was flammable that we, uh, decided to go against that. It wasn’t worth taking the chance.
We mount all of our own stuff for the tests, and we do a set-up set and the first set that we come to the track with. After that, at a race weekend Goodyear does all the mounting and balancing. Matt Aschenbrenner, the tire specialist on the 17 truck, does all that work at the shop. At the shop, there is no 17 truck (Ricky Hendrick’s GMAC Chevrolet) and 24 truck -- it’s one team. The 24 tire person is Lisa Smokstad and she’s our secretary back at the shop. She generally goes with us when we test. But Matt’s got his own little room and he’s in his own little world back there, playing music and just mounting and dismounting tires.
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