a Red Letter date for RYR

This past weekend’s announcement of the return of long-time team engineer Kevin Buskirk may just very well mark the turning point for the race team. It has been close to a year and a half since Buskirk left RYR for a similar position at Richard Childress Racing in March of 2006. While RCR was already on the mend, one can’t help to think that Buskirk’s influence contributed to the success seen in the 29 and 31 teams.

Buskirk brings hands on engineer experience of the ‘miracle tool’ that seems to be finding it’s way into many race shops. RCR has been using an in house ‘Seven Post Rig’ for over a year now and this experience may just get RYR’s program on the fast track.

Also RYR announced that they would reintroduce a dedicated testing team. Something RYR did employ in the early 2000s but for some reason got away from doing. An R&D and testing team can only help in the C.O.T. research and over all performance. It is no secret that RYR got off to a slow start with the C.O.T., but that may have been due to the fact that RYR didn’t build any C.O.T.s until late in the testing phase in the fall of 2006.

Buskirk’s business like approach to the engineering side of racing will be a refreshing addition to RYR. His impact can be immediately seen with RYR testing both the 38 and 88 at Nashville with Buskirk heading up the test.

Now for this red letter date to go full circle all that needs to take place is the return of Scot Elkins from the Champ Car Series. Elkins has headed up the series’ Director of Technology in the Champ Car Operations Department after leaving RYR early in the ’05 season. With RYR, Elkins was the Chief Engineer and was responsible for all engineering functions for the team. His duties included race simulations, race day fuel mileage calculation and Damper build specifications. Elkins also headed up the team’s wind tunnel and seven post testing programs. Over the past month or so, Elkins has made an appearance at the RYR shop, so one could speculate that Robert maybe courting him once again.

Hey Scot………We are getting the band back together!