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Article Series: NASCAR
Everything You Need To Know About NASCAR
How
To Win A NASCAR Race - Is It Chemistry?
Everyone’s always talked about chemistry when it comes to relationships
between men and women, but people seem to look really surprised
when they hear the word chemistry as the deciding factor
in winning a car race. What is chemistry you say? Well,
it’s not what you did in high school in the science lab,
and it’s not a spark between two people who are interested
in each other. No, in the world of NASCAR, chemistry means
something entirely different from these common definitions
of the word.
In NASCAR, chemistry refers to the connection between members
of the same team, most often the chemistry between
the driver and the crew chief. What it specifically means is not only
how well the crew chief and the driver can get along, but most
importantly, the quality of their communication. Of course,
if they get along with each other in day-to-day life, the quality
of their communication will probably be better than if they
don’t like each other. People who like each other tend to leave
the channels open for communication more than people who feel
some sort of negativity toward each other, regardless of the
reason for which there is a bit of a negative feeling.
While
it’s just generally nice to have people get along, when you’re
talking about winning a NASCAR race, communication is
absolutely vital because the driver and the crew are in communication
via the crew chief and via headsets. A crew chief cannot rely
on body language or facial expressions on the part of the driver
in order to help the crew interpret what the driver needs and
wants in order to get a top performance out of the car; the
crew chief must be able to interpret subtle nuances in the
voice of the driver and know what exactly the driver means
when he says one thing or another. The crew chief relies on
what the driver is telling him in order to decide just what
exactly needs to be done to the car at the next fuel stop in
order to maximize performance.
Okay, so chemistry is important, but do drivers really expect
to have chemistry with their crew chiefs? Actually, establishing
such positive and effective chemistry is not generally the
responsibility of the driver; teams are much more likely to
switch crew chiefs than to switch drivers, so it is a very
large part of the crew chief’s job to figure out the voice
and vocabulary of the driver and to really try to find a way
to get along with the driver. Since sponsors sponsor a driver
and his name, a team will not easily get rid of their driver
if it seems to be that there’s not good enough chemistry between
a driver and a crew chief. A team will first try many crew
chiefs in search of a crew chief that has good chemistry with
the driver before even thinking about switching drivers. So,
needless to say, it’s very much in the court of the crew chief
to attempt to establish a good relationship with the driver.
Good chemistry can mean the difference between coming in 7th
and 1st. Rationalists might have trouble seeing the importance
of chemistry in NASCAR racing, but anyone on the inside would
assure you of its importance. Many hard-core NASCAR fans insist
that the best NASCAR star drivers have become champions because
of the synergy of combining a driver and a crew chief who have
good chemistry. In such cases excellent driver + excellent
crew chief do not simply equal excellent team; these two excellent
people, with the addition of chemistry, equals an excellent,
and a winning, team.
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SolveYourProblem.com
: 2009
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