DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET... WORSHAM GOES MONOCHROME IN BRAINERD
<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/d_worsham.jpg" alt="d_worsham" align="left"borders="0"/>
BRAINERD, Minn. (August 8, 2008) -- When Del Worsham pulls to the line in his Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Impala this weekend, at the Lucas Oil Nationals in scenic Brainerd, Minn., he is likely to be doing so in a car that may cause ESPN2 viewers, from coast to coast, to wonder if their TVs have short-circuited back to the days of black & white programming. Worsham recommends that you do not adjust your set, nor should you drop a heavy fist onto the top of the plasma flat screen in a desperate attempt to regain the color mix in your picture. He has simply recreated his standard red and white CSK Impala in a full monochrome look, and he plans to put the car on the track this weekend. As of Friday morning, the car was still being finished in the team's pit area, but Worsham was fully planning on running it.
Although other teams have recently gone to a bare carbon fiber shell with minimal vinyl logos in an effort to save weight, Worsham and his team are taking a different approach and are doing so for a different reason, and most of them will agree it's simply superstitious. Rather than adhere the vinyl panels to a car painted in a base coat of red, Worsham has devised a new "look" for his car's vinyl that is based solely on shades of gray, and those sheets of vinyl have then been applied to the bare shell. The reason? The current red and white design has not won a race since it became the official design for the team in 2006, yet this particular body has a win under its belt, when it was covered in K&N Filters colors earlier this season in Houston.
"The guys are convinced our regular red car can't win, and I have to admit I'm not far behind them on that theory, for whatever reason," Worsham said. "We've done pretty well with the special-edition cars, and we even tried running one of our blue CSK cars for a while this year, so we think it's time to retire the red car and do something different. We were thinking of the options, and the whole concept of what our car would look like on an old black & white TV came to mind. Why not start with a black car, and then adjust the vinyl so wherever we had previously faded from light red, to dark red, and then to black, we'll instead fade from light gray, to dark gray, to black. The object is create the exact same design, but in a total stealth way.
"In reality, this has a lot to do with the fact we like this body a lot more, and it's in a lot better shape than our red CSK car. We really didn't have the time or the desire to paint it, after Sonoma when the Techron vinyl came off, so I was looking at it and kind of came up with the monochrome look out of nowhere. By not painting it, we get to save some money, which is just as important as weight these days, and we get to tweak the red out of the car just in case. Who knows if that red design was just plain unlucky, but I'm not going to argue. Now we have a black and gray car that may look pretty wild, but we know it's a winning body and we think we can win rounds with it. At this stage, the bigger question is 'Why not?' The CSK guys told us to go for it, and my crew loves the idea of getting the red out, so let's try it."
Should Worsham put the new stealth Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Chevy in the Brainerd Winner's Circle, the option of "re-touching" the photo images to add color will have to be discussed at a later date.
<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/d_worsham.jpg" alt="d_worsham" align="left"borders="0"/>
BRAINERD, Minn. (August 8, 2008) -- When Del Worsham pulls to the line in his Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Impala this weekend, at the Lucas Oil Nationals in scenic Brainerd, Minn., he is likely to be doing so in a car that may cause ESPN2 viewers, from coast to coast, to wonder if their TVs have short-circuited back to the days of black & white programming. Worsham recommends that you do not adjust your set, nor should you drop a heavy fist onto the top of the plasma flat screen in a desperate attempt to regain the color mix in your picture. He has simply recreated his standard red and white CSK Impala in a full monochrome look, and he plans to put the car on the track this weekend. As of Friday morning, the car was still being finished in the team's pit area, but Worsham was fully planning on running it.
Although other teams have recently gone to a bare carbon fiber shell with minimal vinyl logos in an effort to save weight, Worsham and his team are taking a different approach and are doing so for a different reason, and most of them will agree it's simply superstitious. Rather than adhere the vinyl panels to a car painted in a base coat of red, Worsham has devised a new "look" for his car's vinyl that is based solely on shades of gray, and those sheets of vinyl have then been applied to the bare shell. The reason? The current red and white design has not won a race since it became the official design for the team in 2006, yet this particular body has a win under its belt, when it was covered in K&N Filters colors earlier this season in Houston.
"The guys are convinced our regular red car can't win, and I have to admit I'm not far behind them on that theory, for whatever reason," Worsham said. "We've done pretty well with the special-edition cars, and we even tried running one of our blue CSK cars for a while this year, so we think it's time to retire the red car and do something different. We were thinking of the options, and the whole concept of what our car would look like on an old black & white TV came to mind. Why not start with a black car, and then adjust the vinyl so wherever we had previously faded from light red, to dark red, and then to black, we'll instead fade from light gray, to dark gray, to black. The object is create the exact same design, but in a total stealth way.
"In reality, this has a lot to do with the fact we like this body a lot more, and it's in a lot better shape than our red CSK car. We really didn't have the time or the desire to paint it, after Sonoma when the Techron vinyl came off, so I was looking at it and kind of came up with the monochrome look out of nowhere. By not painting it, we get to save some money, which is just as important as weight these days, and we get to tweak the red out of the car just in case. Who knows if that red design was just plain unlucky, but I'm not going to argue. Now we have a black and gray car that may look pretty wild, but we know it's a winning body and we think we can win rounds with it. At this stage, the bigger question is 'Why not?' The CSK guys told us to go for it, and my crew loves the idea of getting the red out, so let's try it."
Should Worsham put the new stealth Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Chevy in the Brainerd Winner's Circle, the option of "re-touching" the photo images to add color will have to be discussed at a later date.
