PERENNIALLY MISDIAGNOSING THE PROBLEM
The Charlotte Observer’s David Poole and
Tim Kennedy of Cupnews add to the discussion about what Poole calls "the
medicine NASCAR prescribed for the Dura Lube 300 at New Hampshire International
Speedway." Poole adds, "There has not been enough talk, however, about
the illness."
Poole talks about how restrictor plates
"have no advocates," how even NASCAR is not "particularly
enamored with restrictor plates," how drivers asked for soft walls and how
NASCAR does not trust soft walls, yet curiously does not mention the test NASCAR
did of styrofoam similar to the kind credited with saving Jimmy Johnson’s life
at Watkins Glen, a test whose failure was the final straw toward mandating
plates at NHIS.
Poole writes, "The long term solution
at NHIS is obvious…fix the racetrack." There’s just one problem – the
long term solution is not obvious – or more accurately, the solution is not what
Poole believes it to be. I have attended races at NHIS since the track opened in
1990, and ten years of witnessing racing make it true of Mike Helton’s statement
about how the racetrack at Loudon is the same, but the racecars are not.
Poole cites the controversy over Texas
Motor Speedway 1997-8, yet the analogy is grossly inapt. Texas was a sloppily
conceived, hastily slapped together concoction done by Bruton Smith as a vanity
project more than as a genuine attempt to bring NASCAR to a big market. Its date
was arbitrarily added by Smith when he purchased half of North Wilkesboro and
cancelled its Winston Cup dates after 1996 – this is part of the reason for the
anger over everything that went wrong at Texas: for this the sport gave up one
of its most historic short tracks? Not only were the transitions between the
banking and the straights bad, but water seeped into the surface throughout the
April 1998 weekend and washed out several practices. It was a case of everything
done solely because of dollar signs, not common sense.
Such was not the case at Loudon. Bob Bahre
spent his own money with no guarantee that his track would make it. It took
three seasons of BGN before NHIS got a Winston Cup date. Bahre also purchased
half of North Wilkesboro – this was how Loudon’s September date came to be – but
he was basically shut out of everything there by Bruton Smith.
So "what is the difference between
the Texas and New Hampshire tracks…?" Plenty.
"Why is it so wrong to even suggest
(fixing the track)?" Because the New Hampshire situation glaringly reveals
what should have been obvious for a long time – the tracks are the same, but the
racecars are not. When the Winston Cup guys raced at Loudon with the plates,
there was noticeably more sustained side by side racing in the corners, notably
in the monster side by side battle for third that permeated the opening ten laps
and in the late shootout between Jeff Burton, Bobby Labonte, and the lapped car
of Dale Earnhardt. Contrary to Tim Kennedy’s Cupnews piece, cars were not faster
in the corners than they were before the plates – they just had much more
control in the corners than before, and corner control is perhaps the key to
both competition and safety.
Kennedy wrote that the cars could not pass
because they had no horsepower to get them off the corners – except this is not
true. It was disproved in the Busch North race where the lead changed hands
seven times – contrasting with Martin Truex’s wire to wire win in the July Busch
North 125 run without plates. It was disproved in John Andretti’s charge through
the field and by similar charges by Joe Nemechek and Johnny Benson. It is
regularly disproved in the Featherlite Modified Series, which have run
restrictor plates there ever since NHIS opened.
Kennedy, Poole, and others have routinely
misdiagnosed the problem in racing, be it at plates tracks or anywhere else –
aerodynamics. The Modifieds blast open a lot of air, and the draft kicks in to
great effect as a result. We thus see nonstop passing at most Mod Tour races at
Loudon. We’ve seen it at a great many Winston Cup and Busch Grand National
restrictor plate races over the years, making nonsense of Kennedy’s sour
description of the Loudon experiment as a "typical" restrictor plate
race – a typical plate race was last year’s Talladega events for Winston Cup and
the Busch Series. What makes passing so difficult is that so little air is
displaced anymore that cars cannot use the draft to get the run necessary to
pass. This is why the Craftsman Truck race at Daytona was so thrilling – it
wasn’t lack of plates, it was the effectiveness of the draft. This is why NASCAR
tested aerodynamic disrupters at Daytona in August – to get the draft to where
cars can pass. Indeed, NASCAR tested similar disrupters in April 1997 at Daytona
and the result was nonstop four-wide battling – it was the nonstop four-abreast
racing that foolishly scared NASCAR off mandating such disrupters years ago.
The restrictor plates did what they were
supposed to do, and now they need to be augmented by aero disrupters for
stronger drafting – get that, at Loudon, Pocono, wherever, and you’ll see racing
like it should always be.
The severity of recent crashes put
attention on soft walls, but the real culprit is the rigidity of the chassis.
With all the triangulation put into the front of the cars, the chassis is very
rigid, and generally does not collapse on impact. For all their whining about
walls, teams and chassis builders and also NASCAR have not paid attention to
their own responsibility on chassis rigidity, which is far greater than it is
for tracks. The tracks never created this problem – the teams, the
manufacturers, and the chassis builders did.
To bring back comparison with the
Featherlite Modifieds – the Mods also had a huge safety controversy at the start
of the 1990s after the deaths of several drivers. Ultimately the chassis were
made less rigid, and that helped greatly.
While changes to the flat tracks can help
– I’d like to see a NASCAR mandated minimum 24 degree banking for Winston Cup
tracks – the long term solution is not what David Poole or others pretend it to
be – the real solution is to fix the racecars. Taking it out on the racetracks
or restrictor plates is not the way to go.