How Atlanta's bumps throw the car around; Why more aren't using new Ford engine yet

Racing isn't always what it seems. Take this weekend's race at Atlanta Motor Speedway and see how Ryan Newman describes that track:

"It's really difficult from a fan's perspective to see the bumps that we feel,'' Newman said. "Even when you play it on a video game, Atlanta is just a smooth surface, there's not really any bumps or you can't get that sensation or that feeling. When you're running 200-plus mph going into a corner and you hit a bump that makes the car jump 3 or 4 inches, that's a big bump. That's big feedback is what we call it. Just to have those inconsistencies at that speed is not necessarily typical. Charlotte is super smooth. Texas is smoother than it ever has been, places like Vegas, even though they have little bumps they're not near as big as some of the bumps at Atlanta. I equate it to water. When the water gets choppy, things get that much more difficult whether you're a wakeboarder or a skier or what.''

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Bill Elliott and the Wood Brothers are back at the track this weekend and they'll be using the new Ford F9 engine. Elliott and the Wood Brothers will be the only Ford team using it this weekend.

So, why you ask? This may help.

1. You can't just switch out the old motor for the new one. Says Len Wood, co-owner of the Wood Brothers: "There are different motor mounts in the car for the FR9 and it requires the cable drive fuel pump, which we had never used before until Daytona. The headers are different and some of the radiator connectors are different, so there was a changeover period we went through to get ready.''

2. Testing still continues. Again, Len Wood: "They can run them on the endurance dyno all they want, but until you put that thing on the race track under the real deal with tear offs flying around and getting on your grille and heating it up more than you want, or with pit stops where it gets over-revved here or there, it's never the real deal untili you're really out there.''

3. Ya gotta have all the parts and pieces. Let David Simon, a Ford Racing engineer who has worked alongside Doug Yates on this project, explain this element: "We didn't want to do development on the race track and continuously be changing it while being under the pressure of racing it. The other reason is that once you get the package set, you've got to get the entire pipeline going. The engine shop has a lot of parts they need to make, and we have parts to supply, so if you do that before your race package is set, you run the risk of having to change things and ending up with a lot of scrap parts. We didn't want to be in that situation, so that why the rollout of this open engine is going to be a little bit slower. It's a five-engine rotation per team. Basically, what happens is an engine gets raced on any given weekend, but the engine for the next weekend is already built. When the engine from the first weekend comes in and gets torn down, it's about a three-week process to get it back through the system and rebuilt. So, if you have a third consecutive weekend, that engine has already been built and goes out the door. Since we race just about every single weekend, you've got about a three-week turnaround time for an engine after it's been raced and is ready to race again, you end up needing four to five engines in rotation just to support one car.''

4. OK, so why are the Wood Brothers the only team using this engine? Again, Len Wood: "With us running a limited schedule, in the unlikely event something goes wrong, it doesn't kill us in the points because we're not really worried about points.''

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