Hendrick engines will face their toughest task at AMS

It's the ultimate test of a Nextel Cup engine, a fall race at Atlanta Motor Speedway that combines cool temperatures and high speeds with RPMs that are always in the red zone. For more than three hours, pistons hammer and parts are stressed to a level rarely seen during the rest of the year. Most survive to a teardown and a rebuild and to race another day. But some expire in a spectacular fashion, overcome by heat and pressure, and leave a trail of billowing white smoke in their wake.

For an engine builder, Atlanta is a 1.5-mile, 200-mph crucible. For an engine builder with the top two cars in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, that's only magnified. Such is life for Jeff Andrews, the director of engine development for Hendrick Motorsports, and the man tasked with making sure Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson get through Atlanta without going up in smoke.

"In terms of the Chase, there's pressure on an engine guy when you're warming them up in the garage anymore," Andrews said. "It's that time of year and emotions are high. You've worked all season long to get to that point, and the last thing we want to do is let anyone on the team down -- driver, crew chief, or whoever it might be. There's a lot of pressure in general this time of year being in the position we're in with those two cars, and having three cars in the Chase."

Gordon leads Johnson by 53 points entering Sunday's Pep Boys Auto 500, the seventh of 10 events comprising NASCAR's playoff. Atlanta has had its say in the Chase before -- Kurt Busch was pulling away from the pack before he blew an engine there in 2004, a failure that tightened the field and forced the then-Roush Racing driver to eke out a championship by just eight points. Gordon and Johnson lead their next closest competitor, third-place Clint Bowyer, by a relatively wide margin. One of the few things that could change that is an engine failure by one, or both, of the Hendrick drivers Sunday.

But judging from the results of this season, that's unlikely to happen. Combined, the four Hendrick drivers have experienced just one engine failure this season, that by Casey Mears at Darlington, since attributed to the change to unleaded fuel. A Hendrick engine department shaken by the loss of founder Randy Dorton in the team's 2004 plane crash has been restructured, rebuilt, and is humming along at a level that would make its former boss proud.

"I just feel like the shop as a whole has just risen to another level," said Andrews, who oversees the Hendrick engine program along with Jim Wall, the organization's director of engine engineering.

"You can spend millions and millions and millions of dollars a year and have all this great equipment in the shop, but you have to have the people in the shop operating that equipment with care and an attention to the details. These engines have to be prepped and assembled by people. People use their hands and minds and are paying attention to what they're doing. I give our entire group credit for that this year. I'm so very, very proud of the level they're at right now."

Of course, the machines help. Before they're put to use on an event weekend, the engines produced at Hendrick have to survive two 800-mile simulated races on the dynamometer in the team's metro Charlotte shop. When Johnson and Gordon flip the ignition to start their engines prior to Sunday's 500-mile race, they'll do so with the knowledge that their power plants have passed a test more than three times longer. Hendrick has the capacity to run multiple 800-mile dynamometer races at the same time; Andrews said the team completed its 24th such test of the season on Monday. (Continued)