This past weekend in Daytona, Dale Jarrett fought with an ill-handling car for 400 miles, but was able to bring home a 27th-place finish in the Pepsi 400. Now he and his #44 UPS crew travel to the Chicagoland Speedway this weekend to try and improve on that finish. The team will bring a brand new chassis and body on the #44 UPS Toyota Camry. They feel the new car has some advantages over the bodies from earlier in the season.
"We should definitely see an improvement with the car this weekend," Jarrett said. "As we've talked about before, this whole thing is a learning process. We've been working to get more downforce on the nose of these cars. Chicago is definitely one of those places where you need
it. So hopefully we've done that with this car."
The USG Sheetrock 400 is scheduled for a 4:00 p.m. EDT start this Sunday.
Dale Jarrett Discusses Racing at Chicagoland Speedway
What do you think about racing at Chicago?
"This is a fun, fast track. It's a little bit like Michigan and California, but obviously not as big. Typically you'll see guys run well at Chicago that are good at those other places. You definitely need to get a lot of downforce on the front nose of the car to be able to get it to turn like you want it. If you can do that you can usually end up with a pretty good day. The track is still kind of new so you don't see as much of the side-by-side racing that you would like to see, but I think it's developing the way it should. Maybe in a couple more years we'll see it continue to improve. I'm kind of excited to see how we're going to be this weekend. We're bringing a new car that hopefully will give us more of what we're looking for versus the cars we had earlier in the year."
How important is the upcoming weekend off?
"It's something that is extremely important for these guys that work on the cars. It's going to be a little more tough than the last few years because it is a week earlier and that means we have 17 straight weeks of racing which, even though it's only one more than the last few years, is still extremely tough. I think for our team, especially, it will be important because of the way the season has been going. I know that for me personally, it will be the first week in a while that I'll be able to spend time with my three younger children at the same time so we're all going to Cooperstown for Zach's baseball tournament. Hopefully a weekend off will give everyone a chance to take a break, relax and recharge their batteries for the last half of this season."
UPS Racing Team Notes of Interest
- Dale Jarrett has earned two top-five finishes in six starts at Chicagoland Speedway.
- Jarrett has been running at the end of every Nextel Cup race held at Chicagoland Speedway.
- He has completed 99.69 percent of the laps run in six starts, with an average finish of 16.2.
- Jarrett's best finish came in 2004 with a third-place finish.
