The Sport’s Competition and Crash Myopia
If NASCAR were any other sport, the
mini-assault of six drivers into the NASCAR trailer after the Alabama 500 would
have earned those drivers five-figure fines for unprofessional conduct. As it
was, NASCAR would probably be well advised to pass out such fines – certainly
those drivers were no less guilty of unacceptable deportment than crew chief
Larry Carter in accosting Kevin Harvick during a pit stop under a yellow.
Sterling Marlin’s outburst earned a
much-needed retort from Dean
McNulty in the Toronto Sun, who reminded all that these drivers’ job is to
race as hard as they can, and that if they don’t remember that, they’re in the
wrong business.
There was also Dave
Casey’s piece attacking comments made by Benny Parsons on NBC, a piece that
helps personify the myopia that exists in the sport when it comes to competition
and crashes. He writes that NASCAR may be taking the "you race when and how
we want you to" tack – one hopes they are, for far from being unacceptable,
such a tack is necessary in showing the prima donnas who’s in charge here.
Casey writes about comments that "the
big one" was common at Daytona and Talladega long before the restrictor
plates, and asserts there were only "a few of them." This is wrong –
multi-car crashes have always been common at racetracks. Hardly a week goes by
during Stafford’s regular season that half a race field isn’t decimated in
crashes. Hardly a race goes by that Bristol doesn’t decimate more than half of
its fields in wrecks.
Daytona saw 30-car wrecks in 1960 and
multi-car wrecks in ensuing years – February 1969 (killing Don McTavish), July
1969, February 1972 (killing Friday Hassler), February 1975, February 1976 (a
particularly nasty six car wreck primarily involving Ramo Stott, Johnny Ray, and
Skip Manning), 1979, 1980 (killing Ricky Knotts), 1981 (in the ARCA 200), 1982,
and 1986 – and along the way there was an epidemic of airborne crashes far and
away worse than anything Bobby Labonte went through at Talladega.
Talladega saw the 28-car melee of 1973 and
multi-car pileups in 1975 (particularly the fatal Tiny Lund crash), 1979
(involving 17 cars), 1981, 1983, and 1986 – all this before restrictor plates.
And multi-car melees have been common
elsewhere – such as Charlotte in 1965 (killing Harold Kite), 1974, ’79, ’80
(costing Junior Crouch an arm), 1981, 1986, ’87, ’88, ’92, ’96, ’97, and ’98,
and that isn’t counting the running melees that are The Winston weekend – at
Pocono in 1976, ’79, 80, ’82, ’83, ’86, ’90, ’91, and June 2001 – at Atlanta,
which has seen more than a few multi-car pileups far worse than anything that
has ever happened at Talladega – and so forth.
In the early years of restrictor plate
racing, multi-car crashes were no bigger than what was already commonplace – the
cars were spread out as Sterling Marlin advocates, and in Richard Petty’s 1988
tumble that made the crash worse, as he was hit by cars that were over three
seconds behind him. It wasn’t until May 1991 that 20-car melees became an issue.
The only reason multi-car crashes in the 1970s and ’80s usually didn’t involve
more cars was that through the ’70s there were no more than ten consistently
strong cars while in the 1980s the number of strong cars didn’t exceed 17.
This makes nonsense of the cliché about
how the plate rules allow "inferior cars" to run with the
"best." The dichotomy was never particularly true in the first place,
yet it has been used as the scarlet letter in the never-ending debate.
Then there is the experience of the
Craftsman Trucks at Daytona – in two races the Trucks have (barely) skated by
without restrictor plates, and in 2000 two-thirds of the field crashed out, and
ten trucks helped tear open the fencing – this even through the Trucks were separated
on the track more than the cars.
And along the way it displays the myopia
inherent in the debate. The simple fact is that separating the cars DOES NOT
improve safety. No serious race fan can claim that there hasn’t been many a
multi-car wreck at every racetrack there is, and given that "the big
ones" never involve even peripheral injury, the frequent use of "it’s
a miracle no one got hurt" is maddeningly foolish. Where are drivers more
likely to get hurt – in a crash where they’re so packed together there’s no
momentum before impact, or a crash where they’re spread out, and trailing cars
get a running start before impact?
The answer should be obvious, and it
should be obvious that the answer makes nonsense of the whining about "the
big one." Ricky Craven suffered injuries in a 1996 Talladega melee – he got
hurt worse in a subsequent horrendous hit at Charlotte and hurt worse again in
"little" crashes at Atlanta, Darlington, and finally Texas. Dale
Earnhardt suffered sternum injury in his 1996 Talladega tumble – but his worst
injuries were at Pocono in his early years and his death came in a two-car crash
universal to all racetracks. Bill Elliott was involved in a huge Talladega crash
in 1998 – his worst injuries came in a single-car flight there in 1996, and in a
three-car melee at Fontana a week after his Talladega crash. The five drivers
lost in the last two years were killed in one- or two-car crashes. The drivers
lost in multi-car crashes listed above – notably Friday Hassler and Tiny Lund –
were killed in wrecks where the cars were spread out up to the length of Daytona
or Talladega’s backstretch.
The dichotomy drawn between the size of
the crash and its lethality is a bogus one. It is akin to the Armed Forces’
much-criticized approach of constantly preparing for another World War when its
strength it crippled by myriad small combats. The size of the crash matters less
than its brutality, and the smaller crashes are ALWAYS the harder hits.
It is a PURELY NOTIONAL improvement in
safety, and for such people advocate castration of the greatest racing ever
seen? That’s all it is – a PURELY NOTIONAL improvement in safety. No one can
pretend that Daytona and Talladega don’t offer by far the most competitive
racing in the world – as great as the IRL at Texas was this season, even that
doesn’t quite measure up to Talladega for sheer ferocity of competition.
Yet the crashes singled out are the
accordion-style "big ones" such as at Talladega this past October. And
to "solve" this, we see the following recommended changes:
-
Lower banking
-
Lower cubic inches
-
Lower down force
Dave Casey writes, "(Back before
restrictor plates) the cars weren’t nearly as stable as they are now and a
driver had to lift…..It’s time to bring those days back." Back then the
cars were much heavier, had 300 or more less HP than today, and were noticeably
bigger. At the super ovals drivers didn’t lift – even at Charlotte and Atlanta
they could run open throttle. And the sport saw an attempt to "bring those
days back" in the 5 & 5 rule, a rule that reduced down force and
supposedly forced drivers to lift and thus slow down. It was a total failure.
"Knock the banking down to about 20
degrees and bring handling and driver skill back into the mix. How much skill
does it take to hold the pedal flat on the floor?" Never mind that
centrifugal forces and so forth on flatter tracks mean much more severe impacts,
and at worse angles, and also that running open throttle is what these teams are
constantly setting up their cars to do. And the whole idea of making drivers
lift for the corners involves racing the track, not the other cars – the skill
of a driver is not displayed in racing the track; it is displayed in out-dueling
the opposition, in running in traffic.
"Go to smaller engines." Grand
National ran V6s that were less than 300 CID, and needed restrictor plates all
the same as bigger V8s.
And Paul Miron writes at Catchfence that
great racing supposedly doesn’t involve nose to nose side to side combat – he
thus cites the 1959 Daytona 500 and 1985 Winston 500 as evidence. They only
prove that real racing IS nose to nose side to side – Talladega in 1985 was an embarrassment,
as one car had zero competition.
The truth is that none of these
"answers" amount to anything. If NASCAR does run tests in December at
Daytona, they’ll find what they found in this past year’s tests of alternatives
to the roof spoiler – that none exists.
Dave Casey writes, "I’m hearing
rumors that Mark Martin may decide he’s had enough and retire." Go ahead,
then. If he has no nerve left for this sport, he doesn’t belong in it. Racing is
supposed to be about nerve – about never hesitating to go nose to nose, side to
side for the win for all 500 miles. "This rules package is (not) for those
drivers who don’t want to go out there and do their job…..if they can
single-file it for 500 miles and get a paycheck at the (finish), they need to go
drive somewhere else." Richard Childress’ words ring truer today than even
in August.