Racing Fabricators - Crunch Time!

The first two cars the team built for Biffle-created for the Daytona 500-were evil twins. No matter what the crew did, they couldn't get them to perform. In desperation, Biffle borrowed a back-up car from Matt Kenseth just to get into the first race of the season.

"We tried some stuff and it just didn't work," Biffle says. "We thought we knew what we were doing, and we didn't. Everyone told us to forget what we learned in the Busch series because the Winston Cup cars are entirely different. Now I believe them."

And cars that start bad often stay that way. "The worst thing that can happen for us is to have the first test in a new car go badly," Bisnett says. "Sometimes you can never convince a driver that the car will ever be any good. And often the difference between something a driver figures is junk or great is a single suspension spring. The trick is to make it good at the very beginning; then if there is a problem, the driver doesn't blame the car."

Bisnett, 43, learned his racecraft art as a driver, owner, fabricator, and mechanic on his own cars in New England. "For years I did this for free," he says in a New England accent that stands out against the Southern drawls of North Carolina. "Actually, I guess I paid to do it."

The men who work for him range from newcomers, who begin by cleaning the cars, to master welders and sheetmetal fabricators whose work rivals those of artists. "Some of the guys are here because they have a real passion for the sport," he says. "For a few, it's just a job."

Each team has about 14 cars in its fleet, with a main and a backup for each type of track. Because the Grainger team was new to Winston Cup, the crew was building cars as they were needed. "It's hard to get ahead of the curve," Bisnett says. "For one thing, they are all different, and we keep changing them based on what we learn in testing and at the wind tunnel."

In 2002, Roush Racing went to the wind tunnel about 20 times. Each session may take two or three days as they massage the bodywork with changes almost too small to notice. With NASCAR's common template rule beginning in 2003, it is harder and harder to find something that can make a difference, yet more important to find that edge on the competition.

"Sometimes we go to the wind tunnel to try something new on the body," he says. "And a lot of times that doesn't work, so we end up cutting it up and starting all over again. Other times we go up for quality control, just to be sure what we are building today is as good as what we built yesterday."

And once in a while, they learn something that makes them rethink what they thought they already knew. During the season, a car built for a short track-where bumping and banging is the norm-might be rebodied three or four times. Even if the car isn't heavily damaged, the bodies and chassis are different for each track.

"You end up building five or six different types of cars," Bisnett says. Many of the differences are below the skin. Arriving at Martinsville with a car built for Daytona would be like bringing a golf club to a hockey game. "A Martinsville car has lots of extra steel bracing underneath the sheetmetal," he says. "We just assume it is going to get beat up and most of the sheetmetal ripped off."

The changes from track to track, Bisnett says, "mean we turn out a fresh car every week for Greg." Six cars were in the shop recently. One was on the measuring [surface] plate, its bodywork cut apart to reveal the tubular steel frame. Two-a primary and a backup car-were ready to be loaded into the trailer for the next race. Three crewmembers were finishing up two more, adding windows, decals, numbers, and other appearance items. A sixth was a bare-bones chassis, fresh from the chassis fabrication shop, wheeled in place on a dolly. Another car was in the paint booth, ready for the distinctive Grainger colors. Still others were in the sheetmetal shop, with patches welded in place to replace damage from last week's races.

Bisnett watches the weekend's races on television like an insurance estimator looks at videos of a multicar crash on the interstate, tallying up the work. Left fender = eight hours; rear quarter = six hours; front clip = almost forever.

On the other hand, it is job security for him and his crew. "From the time we begin building a new car until the time it rolls onto the transporter ready to race, it takes 28 days," Bisnett says. "I don't even think about how fast Greg can destroy it all. We really don't mind. We know he drives his heart out every Sunday and wrings everything out of anything we build for him.

"Damage is just part of racing. We consider it a down payment on success."