#as for what the 51 teams uses against other teams--I think they're mostly just focused on trying to run their race!

[whipplefilter]

When Lightning & Cruz started out as CC & racer, what was something outside of general inexperience that other race teams and crew chiefs noticed and thought "ah! - that's a chink in their armor that we can use in our strategy"? On the other tire, what was the first thing that the Ramirez/McQueen duo noticed about another racer or team that they actively tried using to their own advantage?

Lightning's tendency to default to coaching Cruz the way he'd run the race, rather than the best way for Cruz to run the race. Theoretically he knows that he and Cruz are different cars, and what setups and strategies work best for him aren't necessarily what's going to be the optimal options for her. But being able to execute on that in the moment is far easier said than done--Lightning's an instinctual being, and a lot of was he does operates purely on feel. There's a flow.

Crew chiefing Cruz is actually not that--and it's not something that comes naturally to him, particularly given how much of Lightning's career has been spent crew chiefing for himself (both by virtue of having fired his crew chief, or in the wake of Doc's death). It's a hard reflex to un-learn, particularly when the thing you're trying to do instead is something wholly out of your element.

The worst-kept secret in the garage: Lightning is not actually a great crew chief. He's completely average, and rendered even less effective due to inexperience. He will never be a generational talent when it comes to CCing--certainly not the way he very much was as a racer.

It's possible for the other teams to use this to their advantage, by being able to predict how the 51 team is likely to approach a given race (because the less experience/facility Cruz has with a track, the more likely it is Lightning is going to end up defaulting to his own strategies--strategies that aren't optimized for Cruz and that are at this point VERY well-known to any regular viewer of the Piston Cup. The small boon for the 51 team here is that Lightning's "usual" racing style is fairly unpredictable, so at least there's that). The other teams also know that if the 51 team already appears to be flirting with disaster, applying pressure to them will probably cripple their race strategy pretty well.

It would be a mistake, however, to write off the 51 team because of this, and to assume this means they won't be a threat to be reckoned with. Because here's the thing: Cruz was never meant to be a racecar, either. Neither of them have any business being out there in the roles that they are in--but they won the Florida 500 in their first stint out, and it will not be their last. Because they know that these are not the roles that they were built for, and they are smart enough to be smart about it. They have drive enough to work twice as hard to get half as far, to push their brains and bodies to places that don't come naturally, and to find the weird solutions that no one else could possibly have ever seen--because the path they're taking isn't one. And sometimes that added pressure is exactly the thing they need to sneak through that window.

That's what makes the 51 team dangerous.