Entering Week Four
The Winston Cup season is now in its
fourth weekend of competition, and it enters what is now its fastest racetrack.
Several stories continue to grab the attention of all –
Still overshadowing everything is Dale
Earnhardt, and the gruesome campaign by the Orlando Sentinel for access to
Earnhardt’s autopsy photos helped lead Teresa Earnhardt into her first public appearance
since Daytona. In happier times the daughter of Hal Houston could not be riled
by anything; watching her at that press conference, though, she looked like she
could kill just by staring at you.
The fans have rallied to her side in
deluging the Sentinel with protests. The Sentinel responds that it is necessary
for an independent examiner to look at the photos and thus determine if
Earnhardt’s death could have been prevented.
This, though, should set off alarm bells.
What the Sentinel is basically saying is that the official autopsy is somehow
tainted with some kind of falsity. And given the Sentinel’s virulent and often
irrational attacks on NASCAR in the past – among its NASCAR reporters is Juliet
Macur, perhaps the worst such reporter the sport has ever seen; also authoring
for the paper is Ed Hinton, Michael Andretti’s 1993 Sports Illustrated
character-assassin and the subject of a blood-boiling anecdote in Paul
Hemphill’s 1996 NASCAR book Wheels – there is reason to believe that the paper
is more interested in feeding ammunition for its NASCAR bashing campaign than in
an honest examination of Earnhardt’s death.
I certainly can’t see any good that could
come out of yet another autopsy on Earnhardt. Moreover, it goes on the
assumption that we don’t know what killed him – in a sense we don’t, given that
Ken Schrader hit the wall at the same speed at roughly the same angle. But
realistically, we do know that his injuries were massive, not only to his head,
but to his body – it would seem that if blunt force head trauma didn’t kill him,
chances are getting crushed in his chest area might have done the job anyway.
And also we do know, aside from the seat
belt controversy, the root cause of the rash of tragedies that have hit NASCAR
the last two seasons – the rigidity of the chassis, once an ignored aspect of
the sport, and which even now is smothered amid endless campaigning for the HANS
collar and soft walls. Few have noticed that these drivers and cars have been
hitting walls like Earnhardt did for years, decades in fact, without injury, and
without soft walls or the HANS collar – at times they’ve even hit the wall hard
enough to break it, as Andy Farr did at Daytona in 1994 and Tom Carey at Dover
last year.
So what is different this time? What is
different is the chassis, steadily stiffened, with the front ends triangulated
to make the engine a part of the handling of the car, by teams over many years
to improve handling; the first big public splash on this chassis stiffening was
the mid-90s publicity provided to "Concrete car" chassis used at
Bristol and Dover.
NASCAR had a role in this by basically
ignoring the potential safety compromises and also by allowing the use of
stronger steel in roll bars, but here the teams and to a lesser extent the
drivers, who naturally kept demanding better and more consistent handling, ought
to bear a good measure of responsibility. And amid all this talk about the HANS
collar and so forth, the sport ought to be redirecting this energy toward
getting the chassis softened, by switching back to 65 hundredths strength steel
in the roll bars and the addition of frontal crush zones. "Building in more
crushability to the front end makes a lot of sense," says Bill Davis, who
notes that teams could rebuild cars with crush zones in a week if given the
word.
Davis is also candid on his team’s season
in the first three races. "We ran not very well at Rockingham and then ran
very poorly at Las Vegas. So we’re pretty disappointed and scratching our heads.
We’ve got to get a handle on our handling package."
This is a struggle to be found with most
of the Dodges. Petty Enterprises has seen its struggles magnified by Kyle
Petty’s DNQs and by its status as the workhorse in developing the cars for
Dodge; PE is also starting its entire program from scratch in terms of chassis,
bodies, engines, and much of their crew. Ray Evernham’s team, the leader in
developing the cars, has also had its hands full getting its program
competitive, and Melling Racing has been very quiet since Daytona pole day.
Only Sterling Marlin has clicked so far.
"We got a very good team," says team consultant and spotter Lorin
Ranier. Marlin is also showing that he’s still at the top of his driving game.
"We’ve got a lot to learn about the
car, what it needs," says Bill Davis. "We’ve got to build a new
notebook."
It is a sentiment Kyle Petty, Mark
Melling, and Ray Evernham understand.
The news that Oakwood Homes will quit Andy
Petree’s team is stunning. Normally sponsors wait until late in the year before
announcing changes of plans. It is also a frustrating comment on the escalation
of costs in the sport.
NASCAR has long known that costs have been
rising beyond reason – it needs to start taking action. Teams should not need to
have ten or more individual racecars or to have to use lightweight (and
expensive) parts in engines; Petree first began advocating a parts weight rule
last year, and it becomes more appealing as costs continue to escalate. That and
limiting teams to one primary and one backup superspeedway car, plus one primary
and one backup short track car, should help reduce costs by a sizable amount.
What does the sport need most of all?
Two things – more races with 49 or more
lead changes, and 20 different winners in the season. Some will say that 20
different winners is a sign of mediocrity; it is not. It is a sign of
competitive depth.