NASCAR Camping World Series Tour - Team Tending

The car, however, is vastly different from anything he's driven.

"The car I raced last year had the same horsepower but was nearly 600 pounds lighter," he says. "I think just learning how to drive these things is going to take some time."

The team is built around a half dozen former Busch cars it purchased from Harvick. Four are short-track cars, the other two were built for road courses.

"They had a couple they set aside to keep, and told us to go pick out the best of the rest," Jefferson says.

The Camping World Series has become what the NASCAR Busch Series (now Nationwide Series) used to be, with a combination of small, private teams battling with well-funded, young talent being groomed by owners like Joe Gibbs or Richard Childress.

NASCAR uses identical rules in both the East and West divisions, which draws a mixed bag of equipment to the track. The rules allow teams to race the 105-inch wheelbase Nationwide car or a 110-inch wheelbase chassis that had been the foundation of the Cup Series. Teams also have a choice of steel or composite bodies and a built engine or a spec engine developed by Gary Nelson, former head of NASCAR competition and later its development center.

Carruthers decided on the shorter wheelbase, former Busch cars, because most of the ovals the West series visits are a half-mile or less.

"I just think they'll work better," he says.

He also favored the spec engine, but opted to simply buy the parts from Nelson's company and have his own builder do the final assembly.

"Part of our success has been loyalty," says the crew chief. "I always have the same guy build my engines, the same guy do my gearboxes. They become part of our team and share the success. It is important that you have people who feel that way, because then they aren't doing the work just for the money."

And there is plenty of work to do.

Although the former Harvick cars have all been raced, each needed to be modified to accommodate the engine and gearbox for the new series. They also needed to be rewired, have a different ignition system installed and be fitted for the drivers.

Perhaps the biggest task was making them all alike. Shop fabricators climbed in, under and around the cars, measuring and recording the key dimensions and determining how each chassis differs from the others.

"I'm not big on unique cars or parts," says Carruthers. "So we go through every car and make sure that every spare fits every one. That way, if we need to pull a piece off the crash cart, we don't need to be concerned about grabbing a special piece that fits only one car."

The downside of standardization is it takes a lot of work-cutting, grinding, welding and fitting-to make the cars alike. The upside is that they can be set up exactly the same when they leave the shop, and what works on one works on the other.

"Fortunately, Jeff and I have a very similar driving style, so we like the same things in the cars," says Jim Warn. "My guess is that as I get more seat time I may learn enough to want different things, but right now I simply work with what Jeff develops in testing."

And that's the next step.

There's a difference between a car that looks ready to race and one that feels ready to race.

"Testing is when the real work begins," says Jefferson. "It's also when the fun starts."

Jfboone@aol.com