Swanson is cognizant of the fact that he needs to click with his new team and is trying to get ahead of the curve by spending as much time with the team as he can leading into the start of the campaign.
“To try to get meshed as best as you can with a new team, the only thing that does that is time spent together, whether it’s at the track or at the shop,” Swanson explained. “Through the winter, you don’t really get to spend any time at the track together. Racing, there’s nothing that can replace that. But even just being familiar with each other in the shop, how people work and how the thoughts and opinions are and how their backgrounds and perspectives that you gain just by spending time with people, I think all does help.
“Maybe it doesn’t make a specific difference in a race by race application,” Swanson continued. “There are some races you can win without any of that. To work together and try to compete for an entire season and to be at the top level and in contention for the championship hunt, I think it’s something I put a lot of effort in myself and so have members of the team to try and get acquainted and familiar.”
Last week, Swanson, Nolen and the team took advantage of a sunny, warm afternoon to lay down some laps at Salem (Ind.) Speedway and shake some things out.
“We hustled pretty hard,” Swanson recalled. “We worked pretty much all night the night before and had to change some things. We had it completely torn down and went through it again. We just wanted to take the chance to get the first few laps on it. I don’t think we made but 20 laps trying to do the preliminary thing to make sure I was comfortable with how the brakes worked, if I needed to be adjusting anything on them and making sure the engine took off and ran fine.
We were just making sure everything ran as best as it could, so that when we get to Memphis, we can focus on getting adapted to a racetrack I’ve never been to,” Swanson added. “Obviously, it’s been a long time since the team has too, so I’m kind of starting from scratch there.”
Unlike many new driver and owner combinations, Swanson has a leg up by having previous experience with Nolen Racing’s sprint car, most notably capturing the victory in last year’s Little 500 at Anderson (Ind.) Speedway for the team.
In a sense, it’s not starting completely anew. It’s more a continuation of the foundation they’ve already built, one that they’re aiming to recreate in the Silver Crown car.
“I’m lucky,” Swanson said. “In this case, it’s starting completely over in Silver Crown, that’s for sure. But I kind of got a preview working with some of the guys and their pavement sprint car driving for Gene. We have got a race together a little bit, but we’ve just been going through the equipment and making sure we’re familiar with the cars and the engines. It’s all the little details that are different.
“Hopefully we’ll be sorted out as best as we can and be in contention here from the very start.”