LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla.–when the new Michael Waltrip Racing crew chief Brian Pattie scheduled three day test session this week at Walt Disney World Speedway, “a plan that goes is 10 per cent and 90 per cent of the technical team building.”
After hearing the news of his first outing in a race car driver, MWR, Pattie’s old friend Clint Bowyer, said he told Pattie, “Buddy, I’ve never tested three days in my life – what do you think?”
But after a one-day short runs on an odd-shaped layout, 1-mile, Pattie change estimation-literally overnight–from what he had hoped to achieve, for “70 per cent, 30 per cent of the technical development team.”
Quite simply, his team chemistry–despite the fact only began assembling them Born less than two weeks earlier–was good. And veteran crew chief and his Wheelman knows it.
“Right off the bat, everyone just kind of fell into place,” says Bowyer Wednesday afternoon as she relaxed in the back seat test team hauler. “I’m telling you, You’ll learn a lot of sitting at a for dinner and talks racing, to get to know each other and the bench a little racing-build that trust and respect in each other, this early in the game – just like You would on a race track, going through the motions and change the shocks and springs.