Sonoma: Kevin Conway preview

Racing Takes a New Twist for Conway
Rookie Readies for First Road Course Event

Statesville, N.C. (June 15, 2010) - Leading NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Rookie of the Year driver Kevin Conway is ready for his season to take an interesting turn. Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway will mark his initiation into NASCAR-level road-course racing. But he will be ready, having done a variety of tests and practice with the No. 34 ExtenZe Racing team leading up to the Sprint Cup Series' first road course of the 2010 season.

Conway currently leads the Raybestos rookie race by 116 points after capturing his 14th straight Rookie of the Race award at last weekend's race at Michigan International Speedway.

ExtenZe Racing driver Kevin Conway comments on road course racing and Infineon Raceway:

"I have very little road racing experience. I've done some road racing on go-karts and a little bit in some sedan-type racing, but never in a NASCAR race car in Cup or Nationwide. So I'm really looking forward to the road courses. It's really going to prove to be a challenge. I got some laps in at the Virginia International Raceway test a couple weeks ago and then we went to Sonoma last week to test and to do a driving school course just to familiarize myself with the racetrack in a stock car and to get up to speed on the road courses.

"The road courses certainly provide a different challenge for us from our typical oval, having to turn left and right. And obviously your braking points and your shifting points, all those things come into play, too. One of the things that makes a road course so cool is that every corner is a little different. It puts a whole new twist to what we normally do. So I'm really looking forward to it. I think, for me as driver, one of the most important things is really memorizing the racetrack well and learning all the little nuances of it. That is where the simulators can come in handy.

"I think the driver plays a huge role in the road courses, but I think the teams with the most resources still prevail because they're able to build more specialized cars for the road courses than some of the teams without the same amount of resources from an engineering standpoint and from a financial standpoint. So, the bigger teams will still dominate.

"The driver plays a bigger role (on road courses) than some of the ovals we go to. It seems at some of the shorter tracks, the driver comes more into play than the bigger tracks we go to. But at the road tracks, it seems like it's more of a 50-50 balance between the car and the driver.

"I think our goal for Sonoma is to make sure we stay on the asphalt all day long and don't find ourselves in a gravel trap. If you do that and play your pit strategy right, you can have a really good day, and I think there's no reason why we can't come out of Sonoma with a solid top-25 finish."

-source: front row motorsports