WEEK II – STEVE, STERLING, AND SAFETY
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this web site.
NASCAR now enters Week II of its season
and no doubt a lot of people are already wishing the season was over. In Week II
came the first visit of the year at Rockingham, and three stories stood out –
First off is the heart-warming second
career win of Steve Park. Driving the Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet, Park timed
second and stormed to the front almost at will. He had to sweat out running low
on gas and then a late challenge from Bobby Labonte. This led to a dramatic duel
in the final few laps where at one point he thought he was out of gas. The two
nearly lost it all with about two to go going for the win, but Park held on by a
car length, and ran out of gas on his cool-down lap.
The crowd, which even on Monday looked
substantially bigger than Rockingham crowds of recent years, knew they’d seen a
heart-warmer, and they applauded Steve for his win. Steve for his part couldn’t
forget who brought him to NASCAR’s big leagues, and the fifth career Winston Cup
win by DEI sent the sport’s healing process on its way in strong fashion.
It’s been a pretty strange trip for Park.
After years toiling in NASCAR’s Modifieds (curiously, he perhaps remembers the
often-bruising safety debate that division had in the early 1990s that resembles
today’s Winston Cup debate), Steve drove a Kurt Roerhig Chevrolet Truck at New
Hampshire in 1996 and finished in the top five. This caught the eye of Dale
Earnhardt, who signed Park to his Grand National car. Steve then triumphed at
Nashville and two other events in 1997 and was moved up to Winston Cup for 1998.
His Winston Cup debut season was almost
aborted, however, when he broke seemingly every bone in his body at Atlanta. He
came back that August at Indianapolis and ran into the top ten before a blown
tire sent him into the wall. The team generally struggled for most of the next
fifteen months, but by November 1999 Steve was showing form, and he led 72 laps
at Atlanta. 2000 was the breakthrough year with another stellar Atlanta run, two
poles, and the breakthrough win at Watkins Glen.
It is difficult to imagine that Park will
not be a very successful driver in Winston Cup ranks from now on. His win will
certainly balm the wounded hearts of DEI and the Earnhardt family, and will help
carry the sport through this trying time.
Before the start of the Carolina 400, Dale
Earnhardt Junior made a point of talking with Sterling Marlin on camera. That
Marlin, among the sport’s most engaging personalities, would receive death
threats because of the Daytona tragedy shows the hysteria that regrettably
intrudes during such episodes, and certainly any thinking fan should know that
Marlin is not a particularly rough driver.
Marlin’s 19th season in Winston Cup
already looks like it may be his best yet. After eleven years without a Winston
Cup win, Marlin and Morgan-McClure Motorsports clicked and bagged six wins in
three seasons. Marlin later joined what was then SABCO Motorsports, winning a
Gatorade 125 at Daytona, and despite not reaching the success he’d had with the
McClures, he stayed when Chip Ganassi bought the team and converted it to Dodge.
In just two races, Marlin has been exceptionally stout with the Dodge, and it is
a good sign for his season.
Safety has been almost a tautology since
the Daytona 500, and legitimate concerns for safety are certainly out in force.
However, as usually follows such tragedies, safety concerns have at places
mutated into overkill.
First there is the matter of Mike Helton’s
evasive answers to safety questions. In FOX’s pre-race show Darrell Waltrip, in
the approving words of Boston Herald Sports TV critic Jim Baker, "(pressed)
NASCAR chief Mike Helton about safety changes, including uniform helmet and
seat-belt systems, a brake light on each car, and the protective HANS
device."
Helton’s evasiveness, though, may actually
serve a purpose, for questions such as these reflect less a debate on safety
than the pushing of agendas. Dave Moody noted the agenda angle of the safety
debate in his deft discrediting of Lauren Fix last year; here we see it pop up
again.
Uniform helmet and seat-belt systems sound
like a good idea, except that uniformity isn’t all that beneficial; this is
particularly true in the case of the HANS collar. Ricky Rudd noted he doesn’t
like the HANS collar because "it limits my side to side vision" and he
can’t get comfortable with it. Other drivers like Rusty Wallace have said much
the same, and given that lighter, simpler, and better alternatives exist –
notably new Simpson helmet hooks attached to the driver’s uniform and also
old-fashioned shoulder straps – it is wrong for Waltrip to say that "there
shouldn’t be a driver out there today without (the HANS collar)…..(they
should) learn to like it."
No, Darrell – drivers should have a choice
on such a matter – if alternatives to the HANS collar are out there, they are
certainly worth trying. Just because the HANS is a high-tech engineered piece
doesn’t make it better.
On brake lights, it should have been
obvious already that they are useless in racing. The most they can do is
distract a driver, and distraction is something they don’t need in a race.
It’s no wonder Mike Helton is evasive in
his answers – the questions are so loaded that evasiveness is often the best
response.
Safety overkill is also the best
explanation for the controversy over the use of aero anchors at Daytona. One
rumor has it that NASCAR is considering removing the aero anchors at Talladega
in April. It is apparently based on the idea that they bred the massive crash
involving Tony Stewart. Following the Daytona 500 a column by David Poole at
That’s Racin’ summed up the feeling that, by demanding better racing, fans got
the aero anchors and thus supposedly bear some measure of responsibility for
what happened.
Such a consideration, though, is
insulting. For one thing, it blames competition for causing accidents, and this
is flatly inaccurate. Competition is not what causes accidents. The drivers
raced with the same ferocity through the Daytona Shootout and the 125s, and they
raced as hard during practice sessions, and only two minor spins marred the week
until the 500. Drivers complained about how the cars handled, but poor handling
was due to the heavy crosswinds that plagued the 500, particularly off Two and
entering Three; there was certainly no problem with stability, evidenced by the
week’s endless three-wide racing. They raced as hard in last year’s Winston 500
without problem until the finish line, and even that was little different from a
typical Stafford Motor Speedway feature.
Certainly Earnhardt’s crash was not caused
by three-abreast racing – in Earnhardt’s case it wasn’t even true three-wide
racing; it was Earnhardt hogging the groove and forcing those behind him to
stack up and thus leave his two cars, Michael Waltrip’s #15 and Dale Junior’s
#8, home free. And it bears repeating that in any other circumstance,
Earnhardt’s crash would not have been particularly injurious to a driver –
whether the mysterious seatbelt breakage was the cause of his death is not yet
known with certainty, though there seems to be a consensus to that effect; it is
certainly difficult to dispute Ken Schrader’s assessment, as he noted he hit the
wall at the same angle at the same speed.
The Stewart crash started in a top five
that was stringing out single file, and amid all the wailing about "The Big
One" we’ve forgotten that such accordion-type crashes are not what cause
serious injury – it is "the little ones" where drivers are strung out
and get a running start before they hit someone that cause serious injury;
Stewart’s tumble is reminiscent of Jimmy Horton and Micky Hudspeth’s mid-90s
tumbles at Atlanta, where they were hit in mid-air by cars that had been several
seconds behind them.
The old Richard Pettyism about running
close to the wall so you don’t get a running start before hitting it holds as
well for crashes – the more bunched up they are the generally less severe the
impact. Tearing up eighteen cars is certainly bad, but the alternative isn’t
better, so in the long run they’re probably safer packed together for 500 miles
rather than strung out.
Darrell Waltrip’s above retort that
drivers "should learn to like" the HANS collar certainly applies to
nonstop three-abreast racing.
The other aspect of the aero anchor debate
is that it isn’t even relevant to the sport’s real safety issue aside from
helmet collars and Earnhardt’s mysterious broken lap belt – the rigidity of the
chassis. For many years teams have steadily increased the rigidity of their
chassis to improve handling, and NASCAR surprisingly mandated that front roll
bars be strengthened from 93 hundredths to 125 hundredths steel for 2001. Mike
Mulhern also reports that teams are using chrome-moly alloys in roll bars,
alloys that don’t give.
"There is a big loop of things we
need to do to fix our deal," Larry McReynolds notes. That is certainly
true, and one area that isn’t relevant to safety is the ferocity of the
competition. Emasculating competition contributes nothing to safety, and the
racing seen at Daytona is the apex of competition.
A good comparison lies at Texas Motor
Speedway – its stock car events have been strung out, one-sided affairs and have
seen hundreds of wrecked racecars, several serious injuries, and the death of
Tony Roper. The track’s IRL events, on the other hand, have been very
competitive, and at times they’ve been downright incredible with many cars
packed together fighting for the win, and hardly a crash has occurred in seven
races there.
So the competition should be left alone
where it has reached an apex; the safety debate should stick to drivers focusing
on their own safety and on the teams and sport focusing on the rigidity of their
chassis.
Proof that TV criticism is a mug’s game is
shown by the silly controversies over FOX’s coverage of the sport. The coverage
itself is good, and Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip, and to a lesser extent Larry
McReynolds are fun to listen to – certainly better than Bob Jenkins and the
once-fine Benny Parsons, who has become almost a parody of himself since his
debut in full-time TV work in 1989. First it was growling over stupid sponsor
logo placements on car graphics, now it is the fact that FOX had to switch its
Carolina 400 coverage to FX for Monday’s makeup. A lot of fans don’t get FX on
their systems; I don’t, either. I also don’t get XM satellite radio, which is
coming out later this year. None of that, though, is worth the endless griping
on message boards. Fans seem to have a short memory – a lot of them didn’t get
ESPN2 for years after that channel debuted, and several NASCAR races had to be
switched over there in that time.
I’ve repeatedly heard the cliche that
"fans were spoiled over the years by ESPN’s ‘excellent’ coverage." I
put the word excellent in apostrophes because the fact is that a lot of fans
have deluded themselves into thinking ESPN was somehow different in quality to
other networks. At Daytona for the Craftsman Truck 250 ESPN used the same
cameras, same angles, same everything other than graphics and announcers as FOX,
yet people tried to see nonexistent differences in their coverage.
This is why TV criticism is a mug’s game.