Joey Hand has his hands full this week.
The 43-year-old sports car driver and driver coach is gearing up to compete in his second NASCAR Cup Series race this weekend.
He’ll be driving the No. 15 Ford for Rick Ware Racing at the Circuit of The Americas road course in Austin, Texas, following up on his debut last fall at The Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
But his attention isn’t just on his own racing experience.
Hand, winner of the 2011 Rolex 24 At Daytona, is mentoring almost a dozen Ford drivers across all three of NASCAR’s national series as the sport visits COTA for the second time, spending time with them in a simulator as they try to learn the 3.410-mile road course.
“I worked with five yesterday and this week I’m about 10 or 11 between truck, Xfinity and Cup,” Hand said Tuesday.
Among those have been Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe and Kevin Harvick — two drivers from different generations with vastly different backgrounds.
“One thing that I’ve learned … coaching people teaches you how to drive better, also because painting the picture and getting things across to people is not always the way you say it or the way you feel it that’s gonna work for them, so you’ve got to kind of quickly understand who you’re dealing with,” Hand said. “Chase is a dirt guy and he’s got some different lingo maybe and he likes to drive a car a little bit more free than most guys, so you have to take all that into account.Â
“You’ve got Kevin Harvick, who has done way more laps at any of these track in these cars than I have by a lot, so when I went to Sonoma to help him I’m like, ‘How am I gonna help this guy? He’s been doing it for 20 years at this track.’ But the thing about it is I’m trying to pick up tiny little things. If I can help the guys that have been doing this a long time get a tenth or two, then I’ve helped them out because of how close NASCAR racing is.”
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Briscoe, in his second full-time season in the Cup Series, said Hand’s guidance has been “huge” for him.
“Joey is obviously an extremely good road course racer,” Briscoe said. “He has a little bit of a dirt background, so he can kind of relate to what I go through. … Anytime you can have somebody come from a different discipline and different style driving cars and give input, it’s huge. We’ve seen that with other manufacturers kind of doing the same thing and, for me, I like criticism. I like people telling me what I’m doing wrong.”
Hand put his criticism or advice in print.
He gave Briscoe a “whole sheet” of things he could work on.
“I think the good thing about being at the simulator and having Joey here is just the fact that you can run laps, he can see it and come out and say, ‘Hey, try this, this and this,’ and you can apply it,” Briscoe said. “You don’t have to wait until the weekend to try things. I know last year I was definitely able to find speed in places that he was telling me to try things in the simulator. Now we have to race against him. I’ve been telling him all day long that I think he’s gonna be really, really good this weekend.”
Hand only made one start in the Gen 6 car before the Next Gen car came along.
One of attributes applied to the Next Gen machine is that it is more or less tailored made to race on road courses.
Hand tested the new car last fall on the Charlotte Roval. How well does he think it will perform in race conditions compared to its predecessor?
“It’s definitely gonna bridge that gap between the difference in driving,” Hand said. “What I noticed with the old car was like me driving 80% was the right amount to push that car … The difference is, not necessarily this car is gonna be easier to drive (the Next Gen car), but it will be easier to run right on the ragged edge, so it’ll be a 95% car driving all the time. The tire works better being a bit wider, being a lower profile. The independent suspension, the sequential gearbox, it all drives a lot more like a GT car would. It’s still very heavy, though, so that’s one of the things you still manage – roll, where you manage that weight distribution, things like that – that’s still the NASCAR feeling of it, but having some underbody downforce for the diffuser and a fairly good functioning splitter, it changed a lot.”
When it comes to making the transition from NASCAR to sports cars, Hand believes “the swap over will be a lot closer.Â
“And, don’t tell anybody, but I think it will be easier coming from sports cars to here a little bit also.”
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