Recognized as one of the top road
racing talents on the planet, Marcos Ambrose surprised no one by saying he
looks forward to the NASCAR SPrint Cup Series' annual stop at Sonona Raceway this
weekend.“We’re all excited to come here,” he said. “It’s been a good track for me in the past, (but) there’s no certainty of success here. This is one of the hardest road course races you can go to. Our cars are very heavy, they’ve got a lot of power and they don’t stop very well. Grip is at a premium out there. The combination of tire, car and track makes the fall-off pretty extreme.
“Last year, we had the
fastest car for one lap and got the pole position. We’d be the fastest car on
the first couple of go-rounds on fresh tires, but we certainly didn’t have the
endurance to keep the grip for the long run. That’s really what we’re working
on this weekend, trying to make sure our car is good on lap 30 and not just lap
three.”
Ambrose commented on the
bare-knuckled mentality of the last few Sprint Cup road races, saying, “The level of competition continues to get
stronger in NASCAR. There’s more money in the sport and more at stake, so
everyone is putting a lot of effort in. The level of driver (importance) on
road courses is as high as anywhere I’ve seen, so there’s no gimme. There are
at least 20 drivers that could win. It could be 30-odd drivers that have a
chance to win.”
With everyone looking at
him as a favorite to win Sunday, Ambrose said there is added pressure to
perform.
“I’m very mindful that
we’ve had a terrible year, “he said. “This is a really good opportunity to get our
year back on track, so certainly there is added pressure there. I would love to
be Top-10 in points coming into this weekend and just roll through it like a
normal (race), but it’s not for us. We need to turn our year around and this is
a good opportunity for us. We’re looking to break out and have a good weekend
if we can.
Surprisingly, the former
Australian V8 Supercar champion said NASCAR’s new, Gen-6 race car performs similarly to its
predecessor.
“It really drives very
similar,” he said. “We were a little bit faster over the course of a single
lap, so I think the trend continues where it’s a faster race car than the old style
car we ran last year. But the balance and the challenges we’re fighting are
very similar. There’s not a lot of difference, so we’re just going faster when
it goes bad. That’s pretty much how it works.”
He also said the road
course and superspeedway (restrictor plate) races offer an opportunity for
smaller teams to claim their moment in the sun.
“This is a different
style of race for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and… it allows some of the
engineering to be taken away from the sport. When you’re running a
one-and-a-half mile oval and the track is smooth and you’re working an aero
platform, a lot of science goes into that to make us run as fast as we do.
“Here, these tracks are
more about getting a car that’s comfortable, more linear and letting the driver
do the rest. It’s the same with plate racing. If you’ve got a really slippery
car in a plate race, you’ll get the pole position, but it’s no guarantee that
you’re going to win the race because a guy who can work that pack better than
the others can position his car and get himself pushed to the front at the end.
“They’re very different
disciplines – superspeedway versus road course – but they both take some of the
engineering out of the result.”
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