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The No. 59 HT Motorsports team didn't finish up their racing weekend at Kentucky once the Built Ford Tough 225 ended on Saturday night.  Select members of the team had a little bit of homework to take care of prior to returning to their Martinsville, VA-based race shop on Monday.

Crew Chief Fred Graves led a small contingent of crew members to Daimler-Chrysler's Wind Tunnel Facilities in Auburn Hills, Michigan on Sunday night.  With the assistance of manufacturer, Dodge, the team garnered an all-night slot beginning in the evening at 9:30 p.m.  After the team ran its tests, the session wound up around 8:00 a.m. Monday morning.

"It was definitely an all-nighter," said team engineer Scott Graves.  "But, we learned so much that it ended up being a great overall opportunity," he added.

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The team took their primary race chassis No. HT 6.  This truck has run at Texas, Michigan, Kansas and Kentucky prior to the wind tunnel test.  "This is the same truck we've pretty much used for all of the 1.5-mile tracks," said Graves.

"What we tried to accomplish was to find some baseline measurements at racetrack attitude/heights.  We simulated the cornering characteristics at speed," continued Graves.  The team then compared all of the notes gathered to other Dodge statistics from earlier visits to the facility.

"Our drag numbers weren't that bad," said crew chief Fred Graves.  "Where we need the improvement is in the overall downforce—both front and rear.  It's about what we expected---to have one of the components show decent numbers, but be off on another of the components," he added.

Armed with the new data, the No. 59 HT Motorsports team plans to head back to the shop this week and go to work on both the nose and tail sections of their arsenal of trucks.

"The Dodge Engineers were really helpful," said engineer Scott Graves.  "They were able to give us some great direction to go on from here on out.  We plan to make some serious changes to our fleet of trucks and see how the difference pans out on the racetrack," he added.

The team stated that they hope to return to the Auburn Hills Facility again in the next few weeks to see how the improvements have made a difference.  "That will be the final exam," said Graves.  "That and also to see if our finishes improve in the coming weeks," he added.

With Dodge's assistance, they shouldn't have to wait very long.