I have had a lot of experience lately with teams who for one reason or another lack that tad of performance needed to move up. It may be in the setup, maintenance, or driving style. The following are 10 tips that will help us finish this season on a winning note.

The season is winding down. With only a handful of races left, you are looking to make one final push in the standings. Or maybe you have yet to win a race this season and are willing to take a few more chances than before to finally grab that brass ring. After all, you almost certainly will have the engine refreshed during the off-season, so if there was ever a time to gamble this is it, right?

The reasons many racers are unsuccessful in finding sponsorship support is that they never start looking or they are ill prepared for the adventure. And looking for sponsorship-serious financial support-is an adventure with many downs and only some ups.

Drivers and teams sometimes find themselves wanting to change venues and switch from their current form of racing to another. The most common change is from asphalt to dirt. Let's take a look at some of the differences and challenges we may face when switching.

A 16-second pit stop used to be amazing 10 years ago. A low 13-second or 12-second time is almost expected these days. The reduction in time is due to many factors, which include the incredible athletes that make up the pit crews, the efficient choreography designed by the pit crew coaches, and the technology utilized by these teams to make the pit stops smooth and consistent. The technology can apply at any level of racing. For a racer leaving the weekly wars for the traveling series, the pit stop becomes critical.

We've all heard about the three inevitabilities in life: death, taxes,and a mother-in-law who thinks you don't deserve her daughter. Forracers, there's at least one more: the nagging suspicion that you aredown on power. Whether it's true or not, it's always fun to dream abouthow many more races you could win with just a few more ponies spinningthe crankshaft. With that in mind, Circle Track humbly presents these 15tips for getting more power from any engine. Try not to burn up thetires.

The journey to racing fame and racing mediocrity begins at the same place. At some point, all racers, whether they end up in the hall of fame or not, began their involvement in the sport with the decision to give it a shot.

The basics of an automobile engine require lubrication. This means the role of the oiling system is critical to performance and especially critical for high-performance applications. To help you keep your engine in its best condition, we called some experts, who shared their advice based on daily experience in oiling system work.

Technology has proven to be the key to unlock better performance. As methods are tested and found to be beneficial, the supporters line up to take their programs to the next level. Advantage is the universal element sought by all racers.

We have lightened the block, cleaned it up, and done a thorough inspection. Where do we go next?

An overheated racing engine can mean, among other things, an increased rate of failure. When you fail at racing, it means you don’t make money. The same holds true for the brake system on your racing car. When the brakes are applied to slow your car, friction is created. One of the by-products of friction is heat, and excessive heat can and will destroy your brakes.

Overheated brakes are hot enough to boil the brake fluid, increasing the chances for brake failure. As a function of their use, brakes are one of the most stressed parts on the car and they need constant attention, both from the driver on the track and the crew in the shop, to keep them cool.

With an eye toward reducing your heat-related brake problems, Circle Track went to Butch Stevens at BSR Products; Jeff Smallwood at US Brake; Mel Kluhsman at Kluhsman Racing Components; Bill Swiderski of Outlaw Racing Disc Brakes and Herb Bellmore at Dan Press Industries for some tips to help you keep your car’s brakes in their coolest form. Check out their comments in the sidebars below.

Having a durable engine that will run strong throughout the entire racing season is important to any racing driver for some very simple reasons. First, not having to fix an engine after every race helps keep your costs down, and most important, if you’re running at the end of every race, your chances are that much better that you’ll win more.

Engine durability is not an accident. Plan your engine combination for the type of racing you do, how many races you will run and what you can afford. A Winston Cup engine may have the power you dream of having, but it is designed to last one weekend before a rebuild and requires maintenance every time it runs. This is not the engine for a Saturday-night racer who needs to run an entire season.

In order to give you some ideas on what you can do to your engine, Circle Track went to a few experts to get their ideas on what you need to do to stay in the hunt for the long haul. We talked to Dave Pletcher from Pletcher Racing; Charles H. Jenckes, formerly the engine engineer for Joe Gibbs Racing and now an engineer for Barry Grant Inc.; and Marc Boni, Wheeler Motorsports’ performance specialist, to get some answers. Check out the tips over the next few pages to help you through the season.

Quality Parts

Start out with high-quality parts. Starting with better parts means your engine will be built better, which in the long run ends up costing you less. Using the latest, trickest part that doesn’t have the track record of a proven part will most likely let you down. Let someone else be the R&D department. Valvetrain components are the most highly stressed parts in the engine and have a huge impact on performance. Work with a manufacturer and make sure that all the valvetrain parts are designed to work together.

Warm Your Oil

Before you start racing around the track, use an oil heater or let the engine run to warm the oil up to normal operating temperature. Cold oil is thicker and will not flow through the oil filter as easily, minimizing the lubrication of the engine.—Dave Pletcher/Pletcher Racing, Inc.

The next time there’s a NASCAR Winston Cup short-track race on TV, watch the action through the in-car cameras as the cars enter a turn. Note how the drivers seem to wait an interminable time—right until the center of the corner—before they get back on the throttle and drive off down the straight.

At this stage of your career you’re probably not quite as good a driver as Jeff Gordon or Dale Jarrett, so learn from them and copy their techniques. It’s very easy to be impatient and overdrive a Late Model, but if you do so you’ll burn out your tires, spin or hit the wall, and wreck your confidence.

Late model racing on pavement forms the backbone of American circle-track racing. The cars are relatively inexpensive, yet they look like Winston Cup and Busch contenders. A Late Model will typically have a 360-cid engine giving around 500 hp, but the car is heavy at around 3,000 pounds and its tires are only 10 inches wide. Let’s look at the techniques for getting the best out of one.

Be Smooth

This is your first priority. Be smooth with your throttle, steering and braking inputs. A stock car has very little tire compared to the weight of the car, so saving and managing your tires is very important. If you’re not smooth, and you like driving a loose car, you’ll be fast for 10 laps until you burn your right-rear tire up. Then you’ll drop to the back of the field.

Again, watch the top NASCAR guys. If a car is pushing or has bad tires, the driver who deals with this in a smooth manner will lose less time than a rough driver will.

People who come to Late Models from lighter cars—maybe Dwarfs, Legends, or quarter-midgets—tend to over-hustle a stock car. They want to get on the throttle before they reach the apex of the corner. But a Late Model is a big ol’ heavy thing, and once you get it pointed in a direction, it won’t turn very fast.

Entering the Turn

The way you present the car to the entrance of the turn is the foundation, the building block, of everything you will achieve thereafter. If you present the car properly, you will have all the latitude you want to do whatever you wish through the rest of the turn.

Many people who come to the Race Training Center here at Irwindale Speedway are overconfident: They think driving a Late Model will be easy. They run into the corner too fast and get up into the gray stuff near the wall. Then they have to concentrate on saving the situation rather than working on the exit to the corner. They’re over-extending themselves instead of learning.

You’re at the track running a few practice laps and you find your race car isn’t sticking to the track quite as well as you hoped. What can you do at the track, away from the chassis shop and all its tools, to help improve your lap times? Circle Track magazine went to Hooters Pro Cup driver and shop owner Mario Gosselin to find out. Here are six tips we recommend.

From the lowest class of stock car racing all the way up to the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, wiring is an important aspect of getting your race car to Victory Lane. One bad connection or exposed wire can ruin your chances of finishing the race. Circle Track spoke to numerous experts who deal with wiring systems in race cars to come up with some hot tips on how to install and maintain your race car’s wiring system.

Many of our experts manufacture and install wiring systems for the upper levels of auto racing, such as the Winston Cup Series. Though their products may be at the higher end of the racing spectrum, their tips on proper wiring cover all classes of racing.

In regards to weatherproofing and fire prevention, Dennis Overholser of Painless Performance supplied us with a great many tips, while Wade Brown of Brown & Miller Racing Solutions gave us some pointers on connectors, terminals and switches. Last, but not least, David Hatfield of Hatfield Ignition let us in on some of his tips for batteries, battery cables and ignition wires.

It is easy enough for us to tell you to send your engine back to the builder when it is not running quite right. But that’s not always an option. Of course, there will be times when you absolutely need to send the motor back to the engine builder— catastrophic failure or anything remotely close would probably be one of those times. However, when it comes to tuning the engine at the beginning of the season, or freshening it up midseason, Circle Track is here to help.

This month’s Tech Focus is obviously about engine timing, jetting, rebuilding, and tuning. Circle Track spoke to several engine experts across the country to see what they had to say about engine tuning. We received so many great ideas that we had to narrow it down to the top 15.

What is the best way to get your dirt Late Model to stick to the track and perform in a winning manner? Circle Track Maga-zine went to Keith Nosbish’s race shop in Valrico, Florida, to find out. Nosbish races a dirt Late Model in the Southeast Motorsport series in Florida and at East Bay Raceway in Tampa. He comes from a family of racers, including his father, two brothers, and nephew. We also spoke with Mark Richards, manufacturer of Rocket Chassis, to learn some tips that will help every dirt Late Model racer.

“The track goes through different stages—from being heavy, loose dirt, to being packed with an asphalt- like feel as the races progress during the day,” Nosbish explains. Because of this, there is a need for constant change to the race car’s suspension to keep it on the track and be competitive with the other racers.

Here are several crucial tuning tips supplied by both Nosbish and Richards to help you get around the track faster than your opponent:

Rebco Racing Enterprises' line of Outlaw disc-brake calipers offers plenty of choices for racers looking to get the most out of their brakes. The Outlaw line currently offers seven different models of calipers with multiple sizes available for each. All but one is constructed from billet aluminum, which provides superior strength over a cast caliper. The lone exception, the Outlaw GM caliper, is targeted to the budget-conscious racer and is constructed from high-strength, cast aluminum.

It's race day and your car is perfectly set up.

Getting the most speed out of a road race car can be tricky. A tight, sharp, right-hand corner likes the car to be set up one way; a long, sweeping, left-hander prefers the car another way. A suspension setup must favor one or the other and do it where the car can gain the most time.

To a non-racer, tires are nothing more than black rubber doughnuts requiring little maintenance other than an occasional rotation. But to the racer, tires are so much more. Tires are a racer’s direct link to the track; they give feedback to how the car is handling, are glaring indicators of what may be wrong with a suspension setup, and are a key to winning. In racing, it pays to know your tires.

Understanding your brakes will not only help make your car safer; it can also help improve your lap times. Correct brake bias will help you maximize the braking force available from your car, allowing you to brake later, harder, and more confidently.

Meet Al LocyFor the past 11 years, Locy has been "doing tires" for a multitude of Winston West and Winston Cup teams in locations throughout the world. Locy's career began in 1988 as a "gopher" for a Winston West team. Since then, Locy has studied every minute nuance of tires, including tire changing, in his quest to help his race teams go faster. His hard work paid off as he has become known as one of racing's premiere tire men. Today, although he is semiretired, race teams still call on Locy for tire-setup and compound advice.

The most important element of racing is not necessarily quick lap times—it is safety. Safety is one of those things that every racer has to be concerned with. It doesn’t matter if you are a hobbyist or if your plan is to make it to the ranks of Winston Cup racing; safety concerns everyone, and so for that, we are doing a primer in race safety. The following pages are designed to inform and to reinforce the importance safety equipment has in racing. Some of this you have probably heard before, but it is vital every racer knows how to race safely, for in racing, a good day at the track is one you can walk away from.