Blown engines a concern for Daytona 500

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- If it's not one thing, it's something else, and another element of panic has set in here among stock-car teams as the last round of Daytona 500 testing winds up.The problem? A threat of numerous blown engines in the Daytona 500 next month, because of a big jump in engine RPM, under NASCAR's new rules.NASCAR officials are expected to throttle-back a bit with a minor rules change for the 500, but will it be enough?The first problem during the two weeks of testing was tires, which now seems to be fairly well resolved.Then it was the Toyota, with all 11 Toyota drivers considerably faster than everybody else except Rick Hendrick's Chevy men.Now it's the engines, with durability and Toyota's obvious edge the issues.Some rivals are starting to ask pointed questions about why Toyotas are so fast at Talladega and Daytona.One top driver, who asked not to be named, said this week that he has never seen the playing field for the Daytona 500 so unbalanced: "Toyotas just make more power here. It's not aerodynamics, it's sheer power. Don't make it any more complicated than that."I've never seen it this unequal. We saw that at Talladega last fall, and we were told right after that race (by NASCAR) that the problems would be addressed. But it doesn't look like anything has changed."The new Daytona-Talladega engine, in theory, is an open, relatively unrestricted engine like those used at tracks such as Michigan. The old restrictor plate engines would make 420 to 430 horsepower, but these make as much as 675."When we all went to this Car of Tomorrow, NASCAR wanted the engines to turn more RPM, because these cars are bigger through the air, and they wanted the racing more like the trucks -- with more throttle-response," engine builder and team owner Doug Yates said."So NASCAR has pushed RPM up 1,000 more than we used to run here."One classic Daytona speed benchmark over the years has been the Yates Ford operation, which last year swept the front row in 500 qualifying."I'm ticked off about it," Yates said, "because we've been on three of the last four poles here, and now all of a sudden we're six-tenths (of a second) off with the rules change. What they've done has played right into Toyota's hands. At Talladega, it was just a Toyota qualifying day, and Toyota should have won the race; but the smartest guy won (Jeff Gordon)."But this RPM is way over the peak power. We're peaking at 7,800 (RPM) but we're running 8,800, which doesn't make a lot of sense. And it's really hard on the engines."So crew chiefs are expecting NASCAR to announce some rule change with rear end gearing, to bring the RPM down a bit.In fact, teams here this week were told when they arrived to test a new rear end gear, with the hint of just such a change."Certainly they should lower the RPM," Yates said. "But the Toyota thing is a whole other matter. I know they've done their homework, but something is not feeling right to me."Something they're doing is not level with what the rest of us are doing. We've got to figure it out, and we will."But Lee White, Toyota's field manager, says it's just a matter of doing the homework."Gosh, what a difference a year makes," White said. "A year ago we had two brand-new teams and a team that was being resurrected and expanded, plus a brand-new engine, plus the car of tomorrow."It was just an unbelievable challenge. We had no idea.... And we were just fat, dumb and happy, and had no idea how big the mountain we had to climb."But we never once complained or asked for help. We never went to NASCAR -- never went to John Darby or Mike Helton or Steve O'Donnell -- and said 'Man, we really need a better engine, a better carburetor or a better manifold.' Not once."We just kept digging and digging."When the engine package for this race was set last spring, we saw it as an opportunity and went to work. So we put more than a dozen engine men on this project in June for the October Talladega race. I would venture to say nobody else did that, because they were too focused on the 2007 championship, the Chase, and how to beat Hendrick."What people missed was six of our Toyotas made the field at Talladega, qualified in the top eight, and they all raced really well, and four -- Michael Waltrip, David Reutimann, Dave Blaney and Brian Vickers -- raced well enough to win that race, if not for the usual accidents on a superspeedway. If Dave Blaney had timed it just a little different at the end, he could have won, instead of just finishing third."Hendrick's drivers and Chevys have been the only ones capable of running with the Toyotas here."Now my sense is that the Hendrick bunch started working immediately toward this race," White said. "The four Hendrick cars are all running well, and we've got 11 Toyotas running well, and I think that's related."(Contact Mike Mulhern at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)