FONTANA, Calif. — Everything was cool at the start of the Pepsi 500 — or at least considerably cooler than a year ago.
At the 5 p.m. PDT start Sunday, the temperature was 85 degrees at Auto Club Speedway, 22 degrees below the stifling heat at the beginning of the 2007 race.
This time, the temperature was expected to drop into the mid 70s late in the race, to the relief of the drivers who had to endure the scorching heat last year.
“This is one of the toughest tracks that we come to as far as that. The heat is so bad here,” Denny Hamlin said, adding that it makes the speedway one of the toughest on the drivers. “In the summer, the track gets really greasy, the seats get really hot.
“This is probably the No. 2 physically demanding track (behind Pocono) that we go to, especially with this being 500 miles. This is one that you have to stay hydrated for your entire week leading up to it. Even though it goes into the night it’s still very, very hot.”
Jeff Gordon said the heat is just part of the deal for drivers, who get their hot-weather routine down to a science.
“Not quite as hot as it was last year,” he said heading into the race. “It’s just something that you have to get used to. It’s just a part of the conditioning.
“I think probably the most important type of conditioning that we do is getting used to the heat, how we hydrate ourselves, how we cool the drivers inside the car.”
BIDDING GOODBYE: Two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart’s teammate with Joe Gibbs Racing, Kyle Busch, wishes him well in his new endeavor. Stewart is leaving after this season to become an owner-driver of the Haas CNC Racing team, which will become Stewart-Haas Racing next year.
“He gets his way of staying in the sport a lot longer than him just being able to retire and step out,” Busch said. “He’ll have a team that he can have ownership of when he’s old and in his 70’s and 80’s and still being Tony Stewart.
“The fun part about all of that is that he gets to enjoy what he loves to do most, and that’s racing. And he’s still going to be a part of Sprint Cup racing for a long time.”
Stewart hasn’t won a race this year, and Busch said, “Hopefully he can get to victory lane before the year is out.”
HOMES, SWEET HOMES: Jimmie Johnson has been helping out with some housing that has nothing to do with transmissions while he’s in Southern California to defend his 2007 title at Auto Club Speedway.
“We’re out here right now building four homes for Habitat for Humanity and just yesterday, we had a ceremony where I handed out the first set of keys over to a family. That was pretty cool, man,” Johnson, a native of El Cajon, Calif., said on the eve of the Pepsi 500.
SPARKPLUGS: Kevin Harvick went green to take a spin earlier in the week, test-driving a hydrogen-powered Chevrolet Equinox. The vehicle is part of a test fleet of hydrogen fuel cell SUVs, billed as the first large-scale market test of fuel cell vehicles. … Gordon, winless this season, acknowledged that this year has been “a little bit frustrating and disappointing” for him and his team. “We came off such a great year last year. Our team has been phenomenal this year, we just haven’t had the runs, haven’t had the cars. And when we did have the cars haven’t been able to put it all together.”
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