Security Overkill and the Return of a Joe Frasson-ism
"These new tires Goodyear brought in
weren’t worth a damn."
So said a thoroughly angered Joe Frasson
after one of the aforementioned Akron-based shoes erupted out from under him at
the Talladega 500 of 1972. Adding insult to injury, James Hylton won that race
on year-old tires, saying, "I was going with the old rubber anyway. I felt
it would be better."
You think Big Joe Frasson was reminiscing
to Tony Stewart of late?
Drivers who are frank about subjects tend
to get in trouble. So chances are Tony Stewart and Joe Gibbs Racing may suffer
from Stewart’s remarks before and after the Delaware 400 about Goodyear tires.
The upshot is that, as Andy Petree has pointed out in the last couple of years,
JGR is one of the handful of teams that gets free tires while the majority of
teams have to pay for their rubber.
JGR may get it from Goodyear, but that
won’t change the accuracy of Stewart’s remarks. For Goodyear’s tires HAVEN’T
been worth a damn for the last two seasons. The new epidemic of blown right
fronts is graphic testimony, and the unraceability of the cars, already
excessive due to having too much power and too little drag (why 135 MPH isn’t
enough for Dover has never been explained), is exacerbated due to the lack of
grip or consistency in Goodyear’s shoes.
And se we got what transpired in the 2001
Delaware 400 – an epidemic of tire failures and a generally abysmal level of
competition. Thirteen lead changes in 400 miles is a woefully inadequate number,
and Junior needed the Ricky Rudd-Rusty Wallace contretemps to win because he
could not close on the leader otherwise. Of course tires weren’t the only reason
for this – again, excessive power and overly slick aero makes the cars unable to
race in dirty air, a problem NASCAR dealt with at Daytona and Talladega but
which it still hasn’t tried to solve elsewhere.
The only thing that made this Delaware 400
memorable was the epidemic of crashes. Jeff Gordon added to his Rainbow
Instigator list by taking out Ron Hornaday, then Rusty imitated his departed
best buddy in Earnhardting Rudd, then Tony Stewart must have thought this was
1999 Martinsville and Dale Jarrett was Kenny Irwin’s #28.
And driver anger is generally high. There
is, strangely enough, an upside to this – they’re showing the hunger they need
to be competitive, and the intensity level is finally getting where it should
be. Get these cars to where they can RACE and not have to blast each other out
of the way to get by, and we’ll see much better competition.
This weekend saw a great many of us,
including yours truly, get their initial firsthand encounter with new sports
stadium security policies.
Not just big stadiums are banning coolers
and other such paraphernalia – at Stafford Motor Speedway’s delayed regular
season finale on Friday night, a woman and her two children had to go back to
their car because large bags are not allowed on the grounds. I bring a
radio-cassette recorder with headphones to these events and had to transfer my
tapes from my large sack to smaller plastic bags provided by the track office.
The banning of coolers has nothing behind
it in terms of improving security. The banning of backpacks and similar large
bags likewise has nothing behind it, especially since at large stadiums bag
searches are now compulsory as they are at airports. Once searched, these
security types ought to know that a particular bag doesn’t have anything to
worry about within.
Speedway Motorsports tracks will continue
to allow coolers, but that policy probably won’t last. They’ll succumb to the
security overkill that is wafting through the country’s airports and competition
facilities.
The fireworks at Dover were plenty, but
even that didn’t compare to the explosions
at Stafford. The Late Model feature saw a three-wide rampage to the finish
that ended with a crash and three green-white-checker restarts before Jay Stuart
gunned down Bill Davis (no, not that one) for the win. But the big blast came
neat halfway of the SK Modified feature, as John Sandburg got tagged, rode the front stretch
wall, knocked out a speed shot camera, and swept up ten others. When that was
cleaned up Ted Christopher won again, and he may become the NASCAR National
short track champion as a result of his near-unstoppable season in SKs.
Teams are still mad because they’ll have
to race at New Hampshire on Friday November 23. Some have recommended running
the race on Wednesday October 10 instead, though this makes no sense. Some have
suggested cancellation of the event, but this is wrong. There really is no
alternative since NASCAR would not run the race on Monday September 17, and the
galling aspect of team complaints is that they knew not running the race on the
Monday would mean that only a late November date could be found, yet didn’t
speak up at the time about it.
So they’re just going to have to swallow
their pride and race at New Hampshire the day after Thanksgiving.