The Firecracker – Closure, Robbery By Rulebook, and a History Case Closed

Tony Stewart finished sixth in the 2001
Firecracker 400, and the sport achieved closure. That about sums things up in
the 43rd running of Daytona’s July classic. But as is usually the case, the
devil lies in the details.

First off, there is the matter of closure.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Firecracker, five months after the loss of his
father. There has been enormous pressure on Junior to win again, something the
sport has needed to achieve a level of closure. That it came at the track that
caused Senior so much frustration and where he lost the ultimate contest – the
one of life – was even spookier and all the more special.

And the best part was that Junior didn’t
lose his head in the victory celebration. I’m sure a lot of people expected and
likely wanted tears from him, but he handled it better than that – he handled it
with polish and a level-headedness notoriously missing from others in dealing
with the February tragedy. An unwary viewer might have called his post-race TV
comments callous, but of course they weren’t – they were level-headed.

But it didn’t take long for the inevitable
to begin – in fact, on Jack Arute’s radio show a couple of hours after the
Firecracker, he mentioned how conspiracy talk will immediately begin because of
the circumstances involved – Dale Junior wins at Daytona in the first race there
after his father’s death, and he dominates the race, leading 116 laps where in
the three previous enduro races (i.e. not counting short sprints like the
Daytona Shootout and 125 Qualifiers) run with aero anchors no one could lead
more than 53 laps.

That Junior could lead and keep it in the
lead longer than in previous aero anchor races was certainly a surprise, and I
doubt come Talladega in October anyone will lead more than about 60 laps given
how powerful the draft works with the roof spoiler. And NASCAR certainly does
crack down on some teams harder than others. But I doubt any kind of conspiracy
occurred – the closest that probably did occur was an unwritten conspiracy among
some drivers to keep Junior in the lead at the end.

Arute mentioned the belief by some about
suspicious circumstances regarding Richard Petty’s 200th win in the 26th running
of the Firecracker before President Reagan. This is worth examining in some
detail.

The conspiracy theory revolves around the
rumor that Richard Petty ran an outsized engine in the ’84 Firecracker. Examined
in detail, though, the conspiracy falls apart. Here’s why –

Petty drove for Mike Curb and their
engines came from DiGard Racing, whose driver was Petty’s bitterest enemy
Bobby Allison. Moreover, DiGard and Mike Curb were fighting over engine
payments and Robert Yates tried to impound the engine on race morning. Why
they’d give a rival team they were feuding with more cubic inches and thus
more power than their primary driver is never explained by the conspiracy
theorists.
The ’84 Firecracker came eight months
after the Pettygate scandal at Charlotte, and why anyone involved would want
to go through that again is also never explained.
The theory assumes that Petty
delivered an unexpected burst of power to win the race; it ignores that
Petty had already led 200 laps that season and had won at Dover in May. The
theory also forgets that Petty led some 60 laps in that race to the 80 laps
Cale led that day.
Petty, for all his success in the
sport and the attention he brought it, was never a favorite of the Frances,
the antagonism dating from NASCAR’s 1950 disqualification of Lee Petty for
driving in a non-sanctioned stock car event through DQ’s of all three Petty
Plymouths at Charlotte in 1960 for spinning in the quad-oval grass – Rex
White, who wound up beating Richard for the 1960 Grand National title, was
the one who protested – through the PDA and the Talladega boycott, and
onward. A similar story was the case as well with the Wood Brothers, Nord
Krauskopf and Harry Hyde, the Elliotts, Hoss Ellington, Harry Ranier, and a
few others. If anything, NASCAR would have benefited as much in terms of
publicity if Cale Yarborough had won that Firecracker.
Petty didn’t win the race on power,
though he certainly had plenty of that – he won on handling. Petty always
preferred to out handle opponents than to out power them.

This conspiracy ought to be Case Closed.

Tony Stewart finished sixth in the
Firecracker. Officially, of course, he finished 26th, and the reason why shines
light on the stupidity of NASCAR’s out-of-bounds rule at the plate tracks.
Stewart stormed into second below the yellow line before the tri-oval with about
four to go, and was thus black flagged. There was nothing unsafe of even out of
the ordinary in that move, but at Talladega in April NASCAR made the rule that
cars cannot pass below the yellow line.

Ostensibly the reason was for safety, but
anyone listening to Wally Dallenbach’s tortured justification for it on NBC/TNT
had to shake his head in disbelief, for the safety argument doesn’t work – there
was certainly no risk to other drivers by Stewart’s move, as there was clearly a
hole to slot into. I’ve never heard of a crash occurring because someone passed
below the yellow line, not once. Last October at Talladega some drivers
requested an out-of-bounds rule and were wisely blown off by NASCAR. That race
and the subsequent Daytona 500 showed no reason for a yellow-line rule – if
anything, with cars obsessively hogging the bottom lanes almost every lap there
is need to be able to pass below the line.

We saw this also in Kansas’ Indy Lights
100 – literally everyone hogged the bottom groove, and high side passing, though
it worked a lot better than at Texas, was still too difficult to pull off.
Kristan Kolby and Damien Faulkner could only be passed at the finish below the
line, and that is where Townsend Bell rightly went – if it had been Daytona Bell
would have been black flagged, and it would have been wrong in such a
circumstance as well.

I suspect the real reason for the rule in
NASCAR is because, with all the boycott talk in April and endless, and endlessly
stupid, crying and whining by drivers acting like prima donnas, NASCAR chickened
out and threw the drivers something to appease them.

The rule needs to be rescinded, because it
does nothing but shut off a legitimate passing lane. There is no safety issue
with passing below the line. If drivers complaint, NASCAR should tell them off.

As of this writing (July 9) Stewart may
get a suspension over his confrontation with Gary Nelson and Journalnow ace Mike
Mulhern. If he does, maybe he should quit NASCAR and return to IRL’s Northern
Lights series, where he won the 1997 championship and has fielded a car for
others to drive since going to Winston Cup. Quitting over a rule shutting off a
legitimate passing lane may seem trivial, but it would shine more light on how
stupid such a rule is.

On a more pleasant note, the IRL packed
them in at Kansas and delivered another crackerjack shootout. These
cookie-cutter intermediate speedway layouts may look tacky as racing layouts
compared to places like Pocono, the old Atlanta and Ontario layouts, and the
plate tracks, but the IRL has made them terrific layouts for their races.

Eddie Cheever swears like Eddie Murphy in
1983’s Delirious! performance on his radio, but it sure is good to hear a driver
use a word like impeccable in post race interviews. His race long duel with Sam
Hornish and a top-gear-less Buddy Lazier was scintillating, and Donnie
Beechler’s stellar top five was also a treat.

I did notice the cutting nature of Bob
Jenkins’ comment that the IRL’s Kansas 300 had 20 lead changes to the
Firecracker 400’s 14 – and I didn’t notice any kind of line rule when Elizio
Salazar passed three rows of cars on the tri-oval apron on a restart.