Blaney's season could be better

Finding problems and correcting them once a car is built takes a magic wand.
By JOHN BASSETTI
VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF
HARTFORD -- When not wearing gloves while driving the No. 22 Caterpillar car in NASCAR Nextel Cup series races, Dave Blaney likes engine grime on his hands.
He got it Monday afternoon while helping his brother, Dale, prepare a car for use at media day at Sharon Speedway Monday night.
However, the work on a red sprint car may have been for naught as a steady rain pelted the roof of the car shop of DB Racing.
The Hartford native's arrival late Mother's Day and departure today didn't leave him much time for visiting, but there were a few minutes to reflect on the 2006 season.
In short, it's been a struggle.
"Overall, I think we've struggled a lot more than I thought we were going to, a lot more than I'd hoped we were going to," he said. "I wish we could just put our finger on it and say, 'Yeah, there's the problem' and go fix it, but it's not been quite that simple."
He said he thinks the problem is a little bit of everything.
Blaney sighed as he tries to explain further why he's 31st after 11 races.
Nuances
"It's just going to take time to get it going, between new cars being built and different kinds of cars."
As he's said many times before, nuances go a long way, both for and against teams and drivers.
"If you're a couple tenths of a second off, you're in the back."
On the good side is the comfort of having good people to work with at Bill Davis Racing in High Point, N.C.
"We have good resources with Caterpillar and NAPA, so they can get it done and they will get it done," he said. "The bummer is that it's going to take time."
Blaney, who made his 210th career Nextel Cup start Saturday night during the recent Dodge Charger 500 at Darlington, S.C., led one lap but still finished 27th.
There haven't been many other bright spots, save for races at Phoenix, Richmond and Daytona in February.
"That tells you're headed in the right direction. We need to get smarter with our cars and knowing what to do with them during the race. When you run faster during a certain point in the race you know you've got the stuff to do it. It's just a matter of repeating it with a different set of tires and what you go through during the course of a race."
Shop's importance
Another part of the equation is the product built in the shop and taken to the track.
"I think we're a little bit behind on the types of cars we've been building. It just takes little tiny bits in the body area, the suspension side, just little bits here and there can get you behind. But those guys are busting their butts, building new cars and bodies and all the different stuff it takes. We can't say we know exactly how to fix it, but we're going through a process so that something may jump out to make us better."
Blaney said that other teams have the same fluctuations.
"When you're down, like right now, our team and Michael's [Waltrip] team isn't really running good. We're searching around."
He said the Roush cars had the same predicament.
"They were like that three or four years ago. Then they kind of found something that worked good and they kept building on it and they've been really good since."
Blaney's mental approach hasn't wavered.
Playing the hand dealt
"I go in every weekend feeling like we made improvements. I never went to the races thinking 'Oh, man, we're going to struggle.' We go there thinking we're going to run well and you get all you can get out of the weekend and, on Sunday, if that car isn't very good, you still got to get all you can get. If you get ticked and make a stupid mistake and finish 40th, it's going to cost you. If you can run all day and get 25th out of that car, well, that's what you've got to get."
As conservative as it sounds, keeping the car running and respectable at the finish is a prime goal because of the benefits of the point system.
"The top 35 are locked in every week," he said of race eligibility regardless of qualifying. "We're not that far from being over that, so we got to be careful how we race every week."
bassetti@vindy.com