Motorcraft Racing driver Ricky Rudd predicts NASCAR teams will eventually overcome the mandated gear ratio rule announced for the 2005 season just like they did the restrictor plates. Ricky Rudd answers the gear question and others from his fans this week.

NASCAR announced mandated gear ratios next year, how do you feel about this rule? And, will taking RPM away affect the makes differently? (If, for example, Chevys liked higher RMP's than Ford) "I'm not a motor guy so I'm not a real good guy to answer that. I can just speak in general terms. It is just another rule, a major rule that you are going to have to deal with. You are going to have to overcome that rule as best you can. I look at it kind of like the restrictor plate. When they first came out with the restrictor plate, it was actually a pretty good idea at the time. They came in with the existing motor packages that we were running at, say, a Charlotte or Atlanta, bolted a restrictor plate on and instantly knocked over half of the horsepower out of the motor. It didn't cost the car owners hardly any money. It did slow them down, but that lasted about one or two weekends. Then the car owners spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to overcome that plate. And, they were able to, within the rule structure, make motors with a lot more horsepower than they could by simply bolting the plate on the motor. That's at the point where all of a sudden now it cost the owners a tremendous amount of money to have the best package within the rule. And that's where I kind of see this situation going with the gear ratio. It's a very simple thing to do. You come in on a given weekend and you change that gear ratio in the garage area so that everybody has the same gear ratio. You don't have as much RPM. Yes, it will slow the motors down. It should make the motors more dependable. But then the engine builders go home, they look at the power range, they look at the RPM they are turning, and now they design new camshafts. They redo cylinder heads. They do a lot of things different, and now they are nearly back up to where they were before, but it has just cost everybody a lot of money. I understand their intent, but I don't necessarily agree with what they are doing."

When you shift do you tach shift or do you clutch shift? "I don't know what they mean by tach shift. We are given RPM ratings on a road course or even at an oval track. All the cars run what they call a rev limiter chip. If you want to turn the motor at, say, 9,500 RPM, usually the motor builder will have you put a 9,600 RPM chip in the box. And, what that does in case you miss a gear, spin the tires and over rev it, it gets to 9,600 RPM and the motor just pretty much turns off. You'll hear it miss and sputter. Like at New Hampshire you will hear them sputter when they get to the end of the straightaway. That is because you hit that rev limiter chip. Your motor builder doesn't want you to hit that chip a whole lot of laps in a row because it can eventually do damage to the motor. But, the motor builder dictates the RPM that you are gonna run shifting gears, the maximum RPM. They arrive at this by extensive testing in the shops. They have a thing called a spin-tron or a spin fixture. What that does, it's basically half of a motor put together, assembled. Generally it's turned with a big electric motor. And they monitor the valves and at a critical area the valves in the motor will start to splinter out of control at a certain RPM depending on the cam shaft they run and so on. So they will use that spin fixture to dictate or arrive at what is maximum RPM. It's not just a number pulled out of the sky, it's based off of experimentation at the shop. So when you say tach racing, we do what the motor builder says to do on the RPM and listen to them with open ears because they know the destruction limit of the motor. So we turn it according to the tach and the RPM limiter chip."

On pit stops why do the lug nuts never get cross-threaded on the studs of the hub? I know the lugs are glued to the rim and then the tire changer tightens with an impact. If I were to do that on my street car I would for sure get some cross threaded. "A lot of work went into that over the years. They are specially designed. You can't really compare it to a street car. These lug studs are specially designed and they replace them quite often. The lug nuts are used one time. They don't use lug nuts generally twice. The sockets on the guns are specially machined so that they don't hang up on the lug. And the stud has about three-quarters of an inch of polished steel tip that guides the lug nut up on there. The starter part of that lug makes it virtually impossible to cross thread it. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but it is virtually impossible because that little peg that holds it in place until the guy hits it with the gun doesn't allow it to cock whatsoever. It's amazing how it works because it's very seldom that you'd see one crossed up any more."

Do you think, based on the new points system, that you have a better-than-ever chance to make it into the top 10 or win the championship next year? "Well, we ran in the top 10 for many, many years so it is kind of odd that we don't finish in the top 10 more than when we are outside of the top 10. There's many reasons for that this season. We weren't getting to where we needed to get to, and that is one of the reasons for the personnel changes at this point in the season so we'd have 10-12 races to get things clicking and dialed in so that when we do come out of the box next year we'll be competitive right out of the blocks. In this day and time, you can't afford to start off slow and get your group clicking later. You can't afford that delay. That delay would cost you from being in the top 10 in points as close as it is nowadays. Again, the rest of this season will be used as a tune-up to get things consistent before the beginning of next season."