Designed road course faster for stock car drivers

Friday, June 26, 1998 | 2:24 a.m.

SUN WIRE REPORTS

SONOMA, Calif. -- A new track configuration and some of the same old problems greeted Winston Cup drivers when they arrived at Sears Point Raceway to begin preparations for Sunday's Save Mart-Kragen 350-kilometer race.

The circuit, one of only two road courses on which the stock car series competes each season, has been shortened from 2.52 miles to 1.95 by removing three turns, including the carousel, and creating a new sweeping right-hander and an 890-foot straightaway.

Jeremy Mayfield, coming off his first career victory last Sunday at Pocono, tested recently at Sears Point.

"I got a lot of seat time around the new speedway," the series points leader said. "It seems like a real good deal, but it's a lot different from what I expected.

"I figured it would be pretty easy to cut out part of the race track, but it's a little different, a little faster. There's a big right-hand turn now instead of left-hand and right-hand. It's pretty fast because when you come over the top of the hill and go down, it's a 90 (-degree turn), but a wide 90. You don't use a lot of brakes."

Mayfield said it would be hard to tell before getting onto the track today with other cars for practice and the first round of qualifying whether passing will be enhanced by the new configuration.

"Times are a lot faster," he noted. "It kind of adds a little oval track to the road course."

Another driver who got to try out the new track layout is Rick Mast.

"I think it's pretty cool," Mast said. "I think, like every other driver here, there was some apprehension about it when we first saw the sketch of it. Looking at it, we're thinking we're going to come off turn four now and go into (turn) seven at 500 miles an hour and have to make a sharp right-hand turn into that hairpin and, if something goes wrong, you're going to kill half the guys here.

"Well, that's not at all the way the track is. You're coming down through there and you're carrying a lot of speed, which makes it a pretty anxious turn. All the way down that hill is pretty anxious, but when you get to the bottom, they've made the hairpin real wide.

"Turn seven is now real wide and the run-off area is more than you need," Mast continued. "If something goes wrong, and you go out and spin it off the track, you're going to be OK. A bunch of guys who haven't tested out here have come up to me and asked about it, and I've said to all of them: 'Guy's, it's going to be OK."'

Ricky Rudd, one of NASCAR's best road racers and the winner of the inaugural Sears Point race in 1989, has not tested on the new configuration and said he is looking forward to seeing it.

"I think it's going to make the track a lot easier," Rudd said. "I took out some of the harder sections of the race track. I used to make a lot of time from turn one to the point where you came out on that carousel on the drag strip. It's going to be all different now."