More Pre-Charlotte Miscellanea
They spent a week worrying about crashing at Talladega, but Talladega and its
older sister Daytona are safer racetracks than Charlotte, Richmond, and Kansas.
At least that’s what one can certainly say after the appalling tragedy at
Charlotte not three days after this year’s best NASCAR race. ARCA driver Eric
Martin lost his life in a horrendous crash in the quad-oval at Charlotte; his
Chevrolet smashed the fourth-turn wall with both ends and spun to a stop about
halfway before the first kink in the quad-oval as three other cars raced past
safely – including two that squeezed between his spinning Chevrolet and the
wall. Then some eight seconds later, Deborah Renshaw plowed full-throttle into
Martin’s driver’s door, an impact that was not survivable no matter what other
circumstances you can conjure up.
Renshaw suffered serious foot injuries, a concussion, and was released after
some two days in the hospital. Her father Dan Renshaw said afterward that there
was oil on the track, though the fact that three other cars went by Eric Martin
without incident would seem to dispute this.
Questions have been asked of the spotter. One report said that Renshaw’s
spotter, team owner Bob Schacht, radioed to her that the yellow had come out as
Martin was spinning. There was considerable talk of blind spots for spotters
deployed atop haulers in the infield, though where the crash ocurred would seem
to be a fairly easy area for a driver to miss a wreck, as those three other cars
mentioned above did.
Amid the speculation, there were calls that spotters be required to view
practice sessions from atop the main tower, and NASCAR (succumbing yet again to
the practice of reacting for the sake of reaction) before the National 300 Grand
National race authorized just that. This, though, overlooks the excessive
importance of spotters, who increasingly are all but driving the racecars
themselves instead of the actual drivers. And given that the wreck occurred on a
straightaway where three other cars safely went past, questions need to be asked
as to whether Renshaw was looking past the nose of her Ford.
The tragedy also raised questions about ARCA’s feasibility on such tracks,
but given that Winston Cup and Grand National have seen similarly destructive
wrecks at Charlotte – one need remember 1996, when Johnny Benson and Ernie Irvan
were involved in near-identical melees off Turn Two – such questions are an
overreaction. ARCA gives drivers without superspeedway experience just that, and
despite the general lack of resources that has limited the number of competitive
teams, it does have good racing.
Such questions were asked of ARCA when Slick Johnson was killed at Daytona in
1990, with one famously bitter comment that ARCA has "a bunch of guys with
90 MPH talent in 190 MPH cars." This was a gross overreaction, and the
sentiment that somehow ARCA does not belong on tracks like Charlotte is still an
overreaction. One needs to be honest about where driver error played a role, but
one also needs to see that it was an accident that can and has happened to
better drivers over the years.
With Sterling Marlin’s injury and everything else came new calls, most
recently from Mike Wallace1,
for a change in the point system in the form of "mulligans" for
injured drivers – "Sterling Marlin’s case (is a) team that was in
championship contention all year long, and unfortunately because of an injury,
that has been taken away from them."
"I think there ought to be a clause that when you’re running for the
points championship….that they will say, ‘Ok, you’re hurt, but we will allow
your car to still gain the championship points for your driver for (maybe five)
races.’ If they did something like that, you’d see guys who were hurt would sit
out….until they were 100 percent. But it’s being forced upon them to
race."2
Often comparisons are drawn to football and other sports where a key player
goes out with injury but the team can still win the game and the championship.
This is what wrong with the comparisons – racing is NOT a team sport in the same
sense as football, hockey, etc. Racing is an individual vs. individual vs.
individual sport; the driver gets the credit – and suffers the penalty – because
he is the one actually competing against the other drivers. The onus is on the
driver.
And the rules should never be changed to suit a driver who skips races.
Drivers should have to start all the races to win a championship, because that
is what championships are about. If a driver is so injured he shouldn’t be on
the track, then park him – but don’t award him points because someone else is
driving the car.
Mark Martin compares it to his son Matt, who races in two series, neither of
which count all the races but instead use an 80-20 rule. If Matt wins a
championship that way and it turns out he’d lose it because someone else’s worst
finishes were better than his worst finishes, will Mark really be so proud of
his son’s achievements? Will Matt?
I doubt it.
Mike Wallace’s comments also touched on "the real legacy of…..Dale
Earnhardt, Sr….’If it had been me, or any of a number of other drivers,
nothing would have been done,’ Wallace said." But we need to ask if what
has been done was really necessary. That two drivers, one a short tracker the
other a road racer, died this season wearing the HANS, while a third, David Pook,
suffered a paralyzing injury while wearing the HANS, has not shaken the unspoken
faith that "Earnhardt would have lived if he’d worn the HANS and if you’re
not wearing it you’re going to die."
The cars have black boxes, but all they’ve provided is a lot of numbers that
don’t tell us what we didn’t already know. Soft walls at Indy have proven to be
more hype than a real safety change. And the whole attitude within the sport is
an attitude of increased cowardice – drivers advocating mulligans in the points
is something that would never occur with previous generations.
Dale Earnhardt’s real legacy is proving to be one the sport should not have –
a safety overkill legacy that has drained the toughness and manliness out.
The two qualifying rainouts in a row have also brought new attention to
NASCAR’s provisional rules. "Should one team get a starting position over
another simply because it has been to more races?" Kenny Bruce asked in
Winston Cup Scene after relating how Geoff Bodine (why does the press keep using
the stupid child’s name Geoffrey?) didn’t make the field at Talladega because of
the rainout of qualifying.
Well, yes. Going to more races is a more serious commitment than Bodine and
the James Finch team have shown, and should count for something. Bodine only
entered a few races, and he shouldn’t get a spot over a team that has run all
the races.
It again points to the need for larger starting fields, which would help
solve such problems.
Finally, is there any better indication of why F1’s Jacques Villeneuve has
struggled in racing since his halcyon days in the mid-1990s?3
At the US GP Villeneuve ran his mouth about the IRL and he kept it up during
CART’s Miami weekend, and claimed the IRL "lied so much." His basis
for such a claim is asserting that they advertised themselves as an American
series but aren’t now.
Villeneuve is basically believing CART’s own discredited propaganda against
the IRL from 1996-7. IRL NEVER advertised itself as an all-American series, just
as a series where American drivers would get a better shot than in CART, and
since there is still a strong American presence there, his criticism is weakened
all the more.
Villeneuve also harangues about how the IRL isn’t "real" racing
because drivers race each other open throttle, as if there is more skill in
driving the track rather than racing each other. That Villeneuve wasn’t very
good on ovals when he raced in CART ought to be considered in his opinions;
certainly objective reality isn’t behind them.
That the IRL has grown quite quickly and CART has as a result suffered is the
fault of CART and its inept leadership – the fact that CART totally
underestimated the IRL has to kill CARTisans like Villeneuve. Villeneuve has
shown a tendency to run his mouth, and his lack of competitive results the last
few years would seem to bear out that his mouth has hurt his career.
Instead of blaming CART’s failure on the IRL, Jacques Villeneuve ought to see
things more realistically, and stop running his mouth.
Editor’s Note: Recent editorial difficulties prevented previous posting of
this column in timely matter. Such difficulties have been resolved, and
for the sake of completeness we are posting this article as it is – the date of
it’s original submission is highlighted to better remind the reader of the
particular context of time in which it was intended to be published. We
hope you understand, and we thank you for your patience.