Week 33 RacinDeals

PHOE…YAWN…NIX: The
folks that don’t like the racing at Talladega must’ve been on the
edge of their seats during Sunday’s race at Phoenix. Instead of
waiting for the "big one" we were waiting to see who
would be Goodyear’s next victim. But Jeff Burton took advantage
of everyone else’s tire problems and cruised to a win.

Is that racing?

STUNT DRIVING: I saw where
someone called the situation between Sara Lee and Junie Donlevey
a "stunt." Sara Lee informed Donlevey that he was out
of bounds by firing Hut Stricklin, and therefore pulled their
sponsorship.

It’s pretty obvious that someone at Sara
Lee likes Hut. Heck, he’s a likeable guy. But the way it’s
looking is that they have a contract with Hut to be the driver of
whatever car they sponsor, and if that’s the same deal they had
with him and Donlevey, they were perfectly within their rights to
pull their sponsorship, since Hut is no longer driving the #90.

Bill Davis should look at this situation
very carefully. By bringing Stricklin and Sara Lee to the #93 car
as a package, he’s relinquishing all control he has over who
drives for him. Is that what he really wants?

I think I said a few columns ago that if Sara
Lee wants to control who drives for them, they should take a page
out of the Valvoline book and purchase an ownership interest in a
team.

NAS-CART: So NASCAR met with the owners and drivers this week to "fix"
restrictor plate racing, and pretty much undid the aero anchors that were in
place for the last five of those races. OK. If you think it needs to be
fixed, then the solution that makes the most sense is to not race
at the tracks. The tracks were not designed to have cars run at
such high speeds.

But since ISC owns those two tracks, and
NASCAR controls ISC, then they’ll stay on the schedule.

So if the cars are too fast, and we have to
leave the tracks on the schedule, what do we do? Maybe I’m
showing my ignorance of physics here, but what would happen if
those cars weighed 4,000 pounds instead of 3,400? Or 4,400 or 5,000
pounds? Wouldn’t that slow them down?

Of course, the last time they had a
meeting with the owners and drivers like this, it resulted in the same aero
package those same teams are whining about now. Be careful what you ask for….
you just might get it.

FIXING THE PLATE TRACKS:
Actually, I do have a solution. The big complaint is that "us
good drivers are in the same pack with those bad drivers"
and the "good" drivers want to be able to pull away
from the "bad" drivers so there isn’t one big pack. And
as we saw at Phoenix, random chance plays a big factor in the
outcome of a race (did you get a "good" tire or a
"bad" tire?).

So, what’s the solution? We still keep the
restrictor plates, but we have four different sizes, going from 1"
down to 3/4", in 1/16" increments. Put eleven of each
size in a box, and let the drivers pick one at random before the first practice. That’s the
size plate they use that weekend. It’ll certainly separate the packs,
and it takes into account the randomness of racing.

Of course, if you get one of those 3/4"
plates, you can forget about winning. But if you had one of the
big plates and your engine blew up, you wouldn’t win either. And
if you root for one of those drivers with the small plates, you
might as well go out and mow the yard.

But the drivers will get what they asked
for, and isn’t that the main point we get from all the media commentary after Talladega?

GOING MOBILE: It’s amazing
what happens to a team car once the primary driver starts sharing
info again. When Jeremy Mayfield was named as Rusty Wallace’s
pseudo teammate a few years ago, they started out sharing data.
It showed when Mayfield started winning races. But then the next
year Mayfield didn’t win anything. The year after that, he won a
couple of races, and that puts us to this year.

It’s pretty obvious that the information
flow from the 2 to the 12 dried up. But now with the drivers of
those two cars being brothers, it’s also obvious that the flow
has started again.

Mayfield is now forced to choose from
several teams that aren’t up to the level that the 12 was.
Thanks, Rusty.

CITGO LOSING OUT: I tell
you, Citgo would get more return on their sponsorship dollar if
only Kim Burton wore a Citgo cap.

DEW CREW: Congratulations
to Casey Atwood and his pit crew. They got the job done every
time he pitted when he was running at the front.

 A REAL ADVANCE IN SAFETY:
Since February, we’ve seen a lot of stuff (and a lot of PR) about safety
products, from the HANS and Hutchens devices  to soft walls to the Lew
Composites bumper.

Most of that stuff has really just been
thrown together as a response to the media’s cries of "we have to stop
killing drivers." Obviously, no one wants to see any more drivers die,
either as a result of inadequate safety precautions OR as a result of a hastily
designed and tested product.

So, what if there were a device or system
that could reduce an impact by 95%? No, that’s not a typo. Imagine hitting a
wall at 200 mph with this system and feeling as if you only hit the wall at 10
mph?

Does such a system exist? It
does in the minds of some theoretical physicists at the Department of
Physics at the University of Buffalo. Their system could not only be used in the
bumpers of cars but also in the walls as well. I don’t know how close they are
to actually testing this system, but they’re working with NASA on it.

If this system works, protecting NASCAR
drivers will be the least of its abilities. Imagine building a building with
this material…. Putting it in the bumpers of passenger cars…

TOBACCO MADNESS: NASCAR is
sanctioning a truck race at California this weekend. CART is sanctioning a race
there too. Apparently, Marlboro is the "overall" sponsor of the race
weekend, including the NASCAR race.

Now NASCAR doesn’t have any involvement
with Marlboro at all. Sure, they have a major agreement with one of Marlboro’s
competitors. So it sure looks funny to see where Marlboro has prohibited
16 year old Kyle Busch from racing in this weekend’s truck race. Marlboro claims
that their agreement with the attorney general prohibits 16 year olds from
competing in motorsports events that they sponsor. So Busch, who was the fastest
in the first practice for the trucks, was replaced by Jon Woods, who ended up
not making the field on time, taking a provisional.

So let me see if I can summarize this:
Because of the government, NASCAR is at the mercy of a sponsor that they don’t
even have a business relationship with. A minor competitor is forced to miss a
race and gain valuable track time due to this situation.

This has to be the stupidest thing in
motorsports I’ve heard about in a long time.