PRE-SPEEDWEEKS MISCELLANEA
The long national nightmare is over –
No, not that Washington deal – the long
wait to Speedweeks is finally almost over. And as we enter the 43rd running of
Speedweeks some miscellaneous thoughts:
In discussions about the new aero anchors
to be used for the Winston Cup cars we’ve heard a lot about how Daytona is
different from Talladega. Handling is the word used most often to describe the
differences between the two tracks. Now while Daytona is a different arena from
Talladega, it really isn’t so different that the effectiveness of the aero
anchors on the draft can’t be reasonably well gauged from what happened at
Talladega last October.
Looking back over the last 20 500s and
Firecracker 400s, the only ones that stand out as being true handling showdowns
were Richard Petty’s 1984 Firecracker win and Sterling Marlin’s two 500 wins,
and even those were more a case of drafting, or non-drafting in the case of the
1990s, than of the winner having a handling edge.
Daytona is not a handling track the way
Charlotte or Las Vegas are handling tracks. This isn’t to say that handling
isn’t relevant to Daytona, it is simply saying that such talk sells Daytona
short as a racetrack and also sells short the effectiveness of the aero anchors
in getting the draft back. Getting back to the 2000 Winston 500, compare that
one with the 1999 Winston 500, and one can see how much stronger the draft
became in 2000.
This train of thought also permeates the
surprisingly negative reaction of drivers to the use of aero anchors at other
tracks. There was a vagueness to driver reactions that raises more questions –
Steve Park discussed how the aero anchors allowed wide open throttle lapping and
created "an imbalance" in the car; Gary Nelson only said "The
drivers didn’t like it" after the aero test at Las Vegas; Lee Spencer wrote
in The Sporting News that "overall response from the drivers wasn’t
positive. So NASCAR went to the wind tunnel and back to the drawing board."
Now just what do they mean? Park’s talk of
an imbalance in the car was too vague by half. Were the cars too tight? Too
loose? And the complaint about running wide open at Texas forgets that they’re
just about wide open there as it is.
And just how much drafting practice was
put in with the aero anchors? Given reams of past experience with high-drag
aerodynamics, NASCAR certainly should know how a stronger draft can work. It
should also know by now that it can’t keep letting these cars race
aerodynamically uncluttered, because they just aren’t all that raceable as such
– they’re built for speed, not for dirty air; if they get in dirty air they lose
ability to close on other cars with annoying frequency. On a few occasions the
draft kicks in nicely – notably at Atlanta in 2000’s March 500 and Charlotte
last October; in those cases and others, it shouldn’t take much effort to see
how the greater air displaced by aero anchors would have made a good draft much
better.
They’ve tried other things without
success. Now NASCAR should try aero anchors in races and see what happens in
race conditions.
Jonathan Ingram did a piece on Scott
Pruett at On Track Magazine’s web site, detailing Pruett’s struggles and
concluded by noting that John Andretti and Robby Gordon are the only NASCAR
drivers holding on to the "increasingly thin line" of defense against
the notion "that road racing is for pansies."
Ingram might want to further examine that
train of thought in light of the strong finishes by the Earnhardts and Kyle
Petty in the 24 Hours of Daytona. It is an interesting comparison – a road
racing and open wheel veteran (Pruett) enters NASCAR and fails; three NASCAR
veterans enter one of the world’s biggest road races and finish in the top ten.
Earnhardt Sr. hustled his Corvette forward during his drives and Kyle made a
daring late pass in his Porsche.
It certainly does give NASCAR some
bragging rights in terms of driver quality.
Like everyone, I have a hope list for the
2001 season – 20 or more different race winners, wins by the team I make no
bones about rooting for, numerous races with 40 or more lead changes, a point
battle that changes the lead several times over the season and/or comes down to
the very end. The eternal optimist in me believes it can happen.