Thompson, There Is No Problem At Talladega, & Banning Blocking
Crashes galore. Injured crewmen. Injured
spectators. A post-race mini-brawl in the garage area.
Talladega, right? Wrong. This occurred at
a track that, from reading the sanctimony of Winston Cup drivers understandably
angry over losing racecars on the last lap at Talladega, should be
"safer." But then it seems nothing in racing conforms to the sour
grapes of complainers who use words like "horrific" and
"barbaric" to describe superlative competition.
While NASCAR put on one of the best races
ever at Talladega, Thompson
Speedway was putting on its World Series of Auto Racing. Six classes of cars
ran features on Sunday, and they made the madness of Winston Cup look pretty
tame. Every class saw at least a third of their field eliminated in wrecks – the
biggest one of all occurred in the SK-class Modified feature that wiped out
nearly half the field.
And that wasn’t all. Pit crewmen were
injured during the day – enough that three separate ambulances had to be used
and the SK-class feature had to be stopped for about thirty minutes to get
another ambulance. Add to that, spectators were injured – I saw one by a food
stand behind the grandstands being treated in the face and shoulder. No injuries
to spectators appeared to be particularly onerous.
Rick Fuller wasn’t happy with his weekend
but did salvage a decent finish in the Mod Series feature; he also drove in the
track’s ProStock feature and won rather easily over Jeff Conners and Phil
Rondeau. Third place wrapped up the track championship for Rondeau.
Ted Christopher had little trouble winning
the Mod Tour feature after John Blewitt III and Mike
Stefanik led early, this despite a later challenge from Stefanik. Stefanik
took second and secured his fifth career Modified Series title, and the first
for car owner Art Barry.
Russ Wood beat Lou Cicconi in the
Supermodified feature while Mark Buonomo won the Northeast Midget Association
feature.
But the wildest of all was the SK-class
feature. Ted Christopher held a six-point lead over Bert Marvin but was damaged
early on. As the laps wound down Teddy’s damaged car suddenly came to life and
he roared through the field, but he tangled with another car and was eliminated
from the title.
Kerry Malone dominated the race, but in
the final two laps Ron Yuhas Jr. exploded from nowhere and the two hit the line
wheel to wheel, in what was officially ruled a dead heat. Several spectators at
the stripe felt that Malone had won by a roll bar, but the win went to the both
of them. Bert Marvin finished sixth and thus the class title went to him.
By now it was close to nine PM, and as if
that wasn’t enough, as the SKs were packing up in the garage, a fight broke out
between two crewman, one of them apparently from Malone’s team.
NASCAR’s Jim
Hunter said after the Alabama 500 that car and team tests will be done at
Daytona and presumably Talladega in December, "so we’re not faced with this
type of racing in Daytona." He said the gist of angry conversations with
drivers "were about the big wreck and about the fact that (the current
rules) put drivers in a position where they’re mirror-driving, driving
defensively, and that’s not what they feel best doing at a track like
Talladega……(we need) to get away from racing where all the cars are exactly
equal, something so the driver has to back off in the corners and not run wide
open around this place."
The talk about a package where the drivers
have to lift for the corners is eerily reminiscent of the rhetoric used to
justify the 5&5 rule of 1998 – to make the drivers lift. It didn’t slow the
cars down, nor did it improve the racing – on the contrary, it made things worse
in both categories. Nor did it make anything safer. The drivers recommended
rules to make them lift for the corners, and then belatedly realized it was a
bad idea.
There is renewed talk about the "big
car" tested by Sterling Marlin in April at Talladega – that the results of
that test were poor (the car ran faster than the smaller car with the roof
spoiler) is lost amid the talk. There is also renewed advocacy of taking off the
roof spoiler and running a slightly lower rear spoiler angle without a wicker –
"We just really enjoyed the way the cars drafted with the 60-degree spoiler
(and no roof spoiler)," Rusty
Wallace said before Sunday.
There is, however, little reason to
believe him. The package he describes basically reverts to the April 2000
package that all the drivers agreed made the cars unracable. It was the drivers
who demanded aero anchors to begin with – a fact frustratingly left out of
virtually all analyses of the issue – and when they tested them for the first
time at Daytona in August 2000, they raved about how much more raceable the cars
now were. Then they went to Talladega, drafting speeds exploded to 198 and
change, and drivers howled that rate of closure in the draft was far too fast.
So on the spot NASCAR mandated smaller restrictor plates.
And amid all the angry driver and owner
rhetoric – such as Bill Davis’ admonition that the tracks be "fixed" –
"the owners have handled all that expense all these years. Now, fix the
racetracks," never mind that it is the racecars that are the problem, not
the tracks – memories have proven short. In 1970 Bobby Allison, Bobby Isaac, and
David Pearson recommended restricting the fuel-air mixture in the engine to slow
the cars; from this came the first restrictor plates, debuting at the Yankee 400
at Michigan. When Bobby Allison flew into the grandstand fencing in 1987 – this
after six years of increasingly brutal tumbles on NASCAR tracks – drivers among
others demanded speed reductions; Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough were the
most forceful for reducing speeds. Waltrip among others welcomed the return of
the plates, telling CBS during Speedweeks 1988, "I feel, as a driver, now
(with the plates) I can do more than I could before."
This, of course, is the same Waltrip
recommending, at his FOX Sports site, a wholesale reconstruction of the cars,
even harkening back to his his Daytona-winning 1988-model Monte Carlo- a car that drafted
poorly, handled worse, had little grip, ran with substantially less power than
today yet still needed restrictor plates on the big tracks, and overall didn’t
solve anything as far as the rise in speeds. He also brings up the Trucks, never
mind that they have barely skated by as far as getting restrictor plates, may
get them come Speedweeks 2002, needed the spoiler wicker as the cars have gotten
this past Speedweeks, and which have the same poor-handling, overly-aerocized,
aero-push problems that the cars have away from Daytona.
The worst recent analysis of the issue
comes from Peter
Brock at Speedvision.
Written in the annoyingly condescending
style of the elitist, Brock opines that restrictor plate-aero anchor racing
"reduces competition……to the least common denominator, wherein the best
drivers and teams (must) race against inferior drivers and teams and equipment
that can easily match the speed of the most talented organizations." He
continues, "It is a desperate game of chance that leaves little room for
mistakes and even less for the true displays of talent, courage, or
ingenuity."
This is nonsensical. The "best
team-worst team" dichotomy he draws is a bogus one, and that this kind of
racing "leaves little room for the true displays of talent, courage, or
ingenuity" ignores that such displays are not true displays of the above
qualities. Other areas of racing such as NASCAR’s ensuing Phoenix weekend are so
impeded by issues of handling, tires, track position, aero-push, and a general
inability to close up on and pass other cars as to make nonsense of Brock’s
assertion about how "what’s missing now in restrictor plate racing is –
RACING. Today’s best drivers have been reduced to…..semi-active passengers
with minimum throttle response….." never mind that in restrictor plate
racing the drivers can race each other where everywhere else they generally
cannot.
Brock asserts that fans would cheer as
loudly for "a real race – with the fastest ten topping 220 and drafting for
a slingshot finish" as they did at Talladega this time around. Except that
such a situation as he describes is not a real race. 220 is far and away too
fast for any racing, and having only the ten fastest cars in contention for the
win again penalizes drivers able to out duel traffic but impeded by everything
that limits passing – aero-push, track position, lack of a draft, etc.
Brock asserts that reverting to true stock
cars would eliminate the need for restrictor plates and aerodynamic anchors.
This is nonsensical again. The body shape of the cars, not the lack of stock in
the bodies, is why aerodynamics are such an issue. Nor have aero restrictions
alone been enough – the Craftsman Trucks as noted above are forever flirting
with plates, and "a diminution of power" still works better than just
aero changes to actually slow the cars.
Brock is only half-right to assert that
"speed in itself isn’t inherently dangerous." While true in and of
itself, it ignores that 200 MPH is senseless in any racing and impacts at
substantially slower speeds on racetracks are less severe than at the speeds
most tracks presently run. And he does concede the need to slow cars when their
speeds overwhelm available safety.
But his dichotomy concerning the best
drivers and teams remains an exercise in elitist snobbery. Parity is neither
self-defeating nor pointless. Competition is NOT about being the best, it is
about winning. Race drivers never remember winning easily; they cherish the
hardest-earned wins. This is why competition is SUPPOSED to be equal and is
SUPPOSED to be intense. Winning by outfighting the opposition is always a truer
display of talents than winning because of track position, setup, etc.
"Those who impose them are well
intended (but) have no real idea of what it is they are destroying….those
imposed upon are unfairly denied the best use of their equipment." None of
this is accurate. They are fair, they do not destroy anything worth keeping, and
they make racing better.
Drivers complain that they are forced to
block to hold position in plate races. So there is one change that NASCAR ought
to consider – a no-blocking rule.
The IRL mandates that drivers can change
their line only once, and cannot block off another driver trying to pass. Al
Unser Sr. works with competition director Brian Barnhardt to best gauge when
drivers are blocking each other. Barnhardt fined several drivers after the June
Lone Star 500k at Texas and gave warning to them at the Alamo 500k in October.
If NASCAR drivers were forced to hold
their line better, they can race five-abreast with virtually no problem – as it
was, they did that just fine at Talladega; it was Bobby Labonte’s last-lap
idiocy in Turn Two that wiped out everything.
Changes to improve safety are always
considered complex, when it is the simplest of changes that usually work best.
Banning blocking won’t change the competitive nature of racing, but will
eliminate problems as seen at Talladega.