And competitive is what most drivers expect the races to be, though the aggression level may be turned down a notch. Smart driving and patience may be the key to success this weekend over outright speed.
"The cars are very difficult to setup for all conditions, so you need to get a good balance to be strong for both races," said James Davison, who drives for Sam Schmidt Motorsports. "I think the big thing will be if you're running fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth. Not knowing where the grid will be reversed, you may have to play it safe and not try anything stupid."
"You are going to have to be very careful in that first race because, if you have any sort of damage to your car, it's going to be difficult to fix that and get back out there for the second one," series veteran Jeff Simmons agreed, "We've done the double-headers before, but usually it's one race on Saturday, one on Sunday, or a lot more time in between. It's going to be very important to take care of your car in the first race.
"I love Watkins Glen, but it's going to be difficult. There's some strong competition, for sure, and it's really going to be physically and mentally taxing because we're not going to have much time to recover after the first race, so you got to make sure you get through that pretty clean and hope your fitness is good enough to do a 200-mile race instead of just 100 miles as we usually do."
![Wade Cunningham leads the chasing pack in the Freedom 100 [pic credit: IRL/Snoddy]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/444187.jpg)
