Dodge racing boss cites bad luck

CHARLOTTE - Michael Delahanty has a point: If your name isn't Kyle Busch or Carl Edwards, then so far this NASCAR season has been all about bad luck.
Even Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, after all their NASCAR championships, have at times had miserable luck this spring. Gordon at Texas Motor Speedway, for certain, and Johnson at Darlington Raceway and several other tracks.
Delahanty, as head of Dodge's racing efforts, would like for at least one or two of his guys to start turning some heads.
What has been wrong with the Dodge teams since Ryan Newman's Daytona 500 win? Toyota, Ford and sometimes even Chevrolet, are doing well, but Dodge?
"The quick and easy answer is 'bad luck,' " Delahanty said. "You've seen it, race after race.
"Just look at Richmond: Carpentier gets spun, goes flying up the track; Kurt Busch drives right into him — and Montoya spins into the back of them."
That's three Dodge drivers taken out in one fell swoop.
"And go back a week earlier to Talladega," Delahanty said. "In the last couple of laps we had five Dodges taken out, and four of the five were in the top 12.
"How many bad-luck weekends can you get, where our guys are just in the wrong spot at the wrong time?"
Well, what about horsepower? Does Dodge need to get its new engine on line faster? Would that help Dodge teams qualify better, and thus perhaps avoid some bad luck?
"Chevrolet, for example, has had its new engine out for two years, and they're just now getting it rolled into the front line in their cars, and we're pretty much in the same position," Delahanty said.
"Our guys are doing the development in the race shops, working on durability, working on cam shafts, cylinder head configurations, stuff like that. We've done some initial durability tests on the dynos.
"We've got some track time scheduled for later in May, where we're going to start fitting the engine into cars and go out there and just put laps on them.
And where is the new engine supposed to help — up off the corners, down into the corners?
"From what we've seen of the power curves, they certainly look better than the old power curves," Delahanty said. "But we typically don't see the teams' individual power curves, nor do we ask to see them. That's proprietary information.
"But we haven't heard any complaints."
What about the NASCAR's new car? Ford's Jack Roush appears to have found some aerodynamic and chassis keys, and so have the Toyota engineers at Joe Gibbs' operation. Chevy teams so far have been hit or miss, to say the least.
"There are a couple of teams that have found something, Roush and Gibbs," Delahanty said. "But … remember the learning period when the last new car was rolled out into the sport. It's been so long, that people have forgotten how long it takes.

"We were using that old car for a long, long time, and there weren't many tricks left to be discovered. That last new-generation car was back in the 1990s.

"The other thing, too — think about it: we're carrying a lot of rookies right now. Patrick Carpentier, Dario Franchitti, Sam Hornish, guys we're bringing up."
Have Dodge teams loaded up too much on rookies and need more veterans? But even some of the Dodge drivers who have been around for a while aren't performing all that well.
"We don't tell our teams who to hire … but this rookie thing can be a double-edged sword," Delahanty said. "Some of those guys may turn into some pretty outstanding drivers. Look at Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin."
The Dodge team owners — Petty Enterprises Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi and George Gillett and Ray Evernham — all have issues.
"It is a testimony to how competitive NASCAR really is," Delanhanty said.
"Our guys are hitting it just as hard as the other guys. And you can see this when you walk through the garage — the Penske guys are talking to the Evernham guys are talking to the Ganassi guys are talking to the Petty guys. They are team players.
"And, remember, the 'book' these guys have on the car of tomorrow is a three-by-five index car. If you take the book from the car of yesterday and try to use that stuff now, either it doesn't work at all or it works in 180 degrees the other way.
"These guys need time to build that new book."
Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.