Spencer Sounds Off, Hurts Some Feelings

Jimmy Spencer, known earlier in his career as Mr. Excitement, has created a stir by criticizing his Winston Cup team.

He said Carl Haas and Travis Carter, owners of Haas-Carter Motorsports, have to ask themselves, “How can we make this race team better?”

“If I’m part of the mix and I need to be released, hey, I’m for it,” Spencer said. “I’m never going to hold anybody back.”

Spencer, who finished 15th last Sunday at Michigan Speedway, is disappointed because he is 23rd in the standings with only one top 10 finish heading into today’s race at Pocono Raceway.

“I love racing,” he said. “I’ve done it my whole life and I feel like there are some teams out there and some people out there that are just happy to be involved in a Winston Cup team.

“But there are also some people out there trying everything and doing things to be competitive and successful and everything else. I think this team needs to look at what other teams are doing to become better.”

Carter, a former crew chief who oversees the team’s operation, shrugged off Spencer’s criticism.

“In all fairness to Jimmy, he’s kind of in the last couple of weeks going through what I call his annual venting season,” Carter said. “Things kind of build up inside him and it’s like a little volcano where the top starts to crack and things pop off.”

Carter said the team would deal with the situation properly.

But Spencer, who has driven for Carter since 1995, has definitely caused some hard feelings.

“Some people take it seriously and are insulted by it,” Carter said.

AHEAD OF SCHEDULE: Nobody on Ward Burton’s team hung his head last Sunday when the driver slipped from second to third in the standings despite a sixth-place finish.

“We’re not very concerned about dropping,” said Tommy Baldwin, Burton’s crew chief. “We’re almost halfway through the year and still in the hunt for the championship.”

Burton, who drives for Bill Davis Racing, was a career-best ninth in the points last year.

In the first 14 races of the 34-race season, Burton has 10 top-10s, but only three top fives, including his victory in Darlington, S.C.

AERO GAME: Everyone knows NASCAR is going to do something about keeping the car makes that compete in Winston Cup as even as possible. Nobody knows for sure what the sanctioning body will do.

Gary Nelson, the director of the Winston Corp. series, has said the series is looking into the possibility of using what he calls aero-matching and what others describe as a common template for the cars.

Currently, each of the makes being used - Ford Taurus, Pontiac Grand Prix and Chevrolet Monte Carlo - have different templates. Those are metal forms that must fit snugly over the car for it to be legal.

Asked how aero-matching would change a crew chief’s role, Jimmy Makar, who works with series points leader Bobby Labonte, said, “Probably very little, truthfully.”

“All that would do would be to give you peace of mind that you’ve got the same type of aerodynamic package that everybody else has got,” he said. “We’d still be looking for little things that make our particular car better inside the templates.”

Makar said there are always going to be areas that don’t have a measurement or rule to fit.

But Makar, brother-in-law and former crew chief for defending series champion, Dale Jarrett, added that a common template would ease everyone’s mind.

“If you look at the aerodynamic results from last year’s wind tunnel testing that NASCAR did, the cars were really pretty close, within a couple percent of downforce,” he said. “So we’ve been there before.

‘I think what happens is you get good racing and crew chiefs, car owners and drivers can stop worrying about whether they are at some kind of deficit that is insurmountable.”

STAT OF THE WEEK: John Andretti, Chad Little and Kenny Wallace are the only active drivers with 10 or more Winston Cup races at Pocono Raceway who have never posted a top-10 finish. Andretti and Little have had a best finish of 12th at the Long Pond, Pa., track, while Wallace’s best is 15th.