The Five & Five Rule Redux

The following is a quick and dirty history
of a rule change whose modus operandi was similar to the change coming for the
restrictor plate tracks in 2002.

In latter 1997 the issue of speeds was
becoming more acute at intermediate supers like Charlotte and Atlanta. In
November Atlanta debuted as a 1.54-mile quad-oval and speeds exploded some
eleven MPH over the speeds in March when the track was still a true oval – the
top speeds at the track were in the 197 range, and ARCA dominator Tim Steele,
practicing in Bud Moore’s Ford, slammed the wall and was briefly hospitalized.
The race itself went off without much trouble – only a hard hit involving Brett
Bodine and rookie Buckshot Jones as well as Dale Earnhardt’s later crash – as
Bobby Labonte took the win and Jeff Gordon, despite crashing into Bobby Hamilton
before opening practice and starting near the end of the field in a backup car,
won the title.

But the speeds were an issue. And NASCAR
tested a restrictor plate – 1.25 inches as opposed to the 15/16th inch used at
the fastest tracks – at Atlanta. The results were discouraging – the car tested
was not slowed; the larger size of the plate curiously was not considered in
trying to figure out why. NASCAR then consulted with drivers and decided to
shave down force off the cars. For non-plate tracks in 1998 the cars would shave
their air dams to five inches of ground clearance and shave their spoilers to
five inches in height; the idea was that less down force would force drivers to
lift instead of running open throttle, and this would slow speeds. The Pontiacs
were given a concession of nearly a half-inch to better balance the car.

Oddly, few seemed to remember that such a
rule had been tried before, at Charlotte and Atlanta in the autumn of 1993, and
with the addition of raising the roofline to 51 inches in height.

The first race with this new 5&5 rule
was the Carolina 400. The results were decidedly mixed – the racing was
strikingly competitive at nearly 30 lead changes. There were also several
crashes, including a mulit-car melee when Ernie Irvan and Bobby Labonte spun in
classic air-off-the-spoiler fashion and collected several others. Jeff Gordon
won the race despite domination by the new Ford Taurus.

The inaugural Las Vegas 400 went off with
little in the way of competition, and Mark Martin led a Ford near-monopoly of
the top fifteen finishing spots.

By the Atlanta 500 weekend driver
complaints about the 5&5 rule began in earnest, as inability to handle in
dirty air was the primary protest. Rusty Wallace countered that he preferred
racing where drivers had to lift off the gas instead of running open throttle.
His praise of the rule, though, was increasingly not being reflected on the
track. The cars WERE unable to race in dirty air; drivers were not lifting as
much as first thought despite the substantial loss of down force. And the
Atlanta 500 weekend itself was a seriously injurious affair, with crashes
hospitalizing Steve Park and leaving him out of the racecar until August, Bob
Kelly, Mike Skinner, and Derrike Cope, who sat out until latter April.

At Darlington NASCAR shaved a couple of
inches off the sides of the Ford spoiler; it affected nothing. Bristol was the
usual crash fest of a weekend, and then came the Texas 500 and a massive melee
on the second lap as the cars were beginning to string out. Greg Sacks was
involved in a later crash that left him injured – at the time the seriousness of
his injury was something of a mystery – while Mike Skinner, still nursing
injuries from Atlanta, slammed the wall again and this time had to sit out
several races. Mark Martin survived the mayhem for the win.

At Martinsville Bobby Hamilton survived
the usual epidemic of crashes and several bouts of multi-lap side by side racing
– notably with John Andretti – for the win, and pointedly noted in victory lane
how clean air was vital even at Martinsville – "You don’t think the 5&5
rule (affects cars here), these things got air pushes at Martinsville!"

Talladega was largely a tranquil affair
with cars spreading out noticeably more than had been seen there the previous
October, until a huge melee in the tri-oval erupted; Bill Elliott and Dale
Earnhardt hit the wall on their sides and with Kyle Petty swept up, and cars
behind them spun and stacked up. Elliott was banged up but raced at Fontana the
next week; Earnhardt suffered burns to his face and raced with a facial sock.
But it went from bad to worse; when Dale Jarrett blew his engine (this after
crashing on his qualifying lap) Elliott and Petty hammered the wall harder than
at Talladega and Earnhardt spun.

The Winston saw a four-car melee in Turn
One, and there were so many cautions that Jeff Gordon ran out of gas on the
final lap. He made up for it in a surprisingly fierce World 600, then led 375
laps at Dover but pitted for gas and gave the win to Jarrett. He passed Rusty
Wallace at Richmond then was hooked into the wall; later crashes eliminated a
number of cars and led to a controversial red flag and an late confrontation
between Dale Jarrett and Terry Labonte. Gordon led some 150 laps at Michigan but
was gunned down by Martin, then had nothing for Jeremy Mayfield at Pocono.

On the season went, and the expectations
of the 5&5 rule were not being borne out – speeds were still rising (at
Indianapolis for instance Ernie Irvan set a stock car record), there was no
increase in safety, and the miserable handling of the cars was making for a poor
season. At New Hampshire a nasty melee erupted involving Geoff Bodine, Joe
Nemechek, Hut Stricklin, Andy Hillenburg, and Steve Grissom, whose car erupted
in flame. At Indy Bodine, Mayfield, and others hit the wall; Kenny Irwin hit the
wall and pointedly reminded interviewers about the 5&5 rule; Jimmy Spencer
was injured and had to sit out a subsequent race.

Finally, entering the National 500 at
Charlotte, the drivers in effect conceded the 5&5 rule was a bad idea. Terry
Labonte, Earnhardt, Jimmy Spencer were among those commenting how the rule had
made passing impossible. The 500 itself was another clinic in the rule’s failure
– eleven yellows involved everything from a broken sewer line to a 12-car melee
in Turn Two. When Gordon wrapped up the title at Rockingham, NASCAR dropped the
5&5 rule and reverted to high-down force air dam and spoiler specs.

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This little history of the 5&5 rule
illustrates the pattern that is being repeated with the aero-clean
configuration. The drivers wanted a change from the roof spoiler rule of the
last five plate races, and now have gotten a rule that is meant to break up the
packs. They may also get air dam changes to try and lessen open throttle
running.

Given the 5&5 rule and also the
history of restrictor plate racing before the roof spoiler, one can see what
will occur with this new change –

THE CARS WILL BE EFFECTIVELY UNRACEABLE –
In 2001 the Grand National cars ran the aero package that the Cup cars will run
next year, and the results were dismal – the draft was ineffective, passing was
rare, and crashes were the same. The cars pushed in dirty air and it was
incurable. Chances are Winston Cup teams will start seeing this come Daytona,
and we can already hear the howls of protest about how the cars can’t pass,
can’t close up, handle miserable in traffic, etc. – protests by drivers that led
to the roof spoiler to start with.

Some believe that there will be more
lifting for the corners, especially if the air dam is shaved more. The 5&5
rule, though, showed this to be fantasy.

Dale
Jarrett stated after the meeting, "The racing is going to be good. We
will be (four-wide) but not constantly, so I think it will be back to where the
better teams….can take advantage and use that to make their teams and their
chances better." There isn’t much confidence that can be deployed to this
assertion, though.

SAFETY WILL NOT BE CHANGED – A huge caveat
is necessary in regard to the endless gripe that in plate races the cars are so
bunched up that one little mistake wipes out half the field. The history of
plate races is not that cut-and-dried, for quite often the cars have spread out,
and multi-car crashes erupted anyway. This was the case in the first three
seasons of plate racing – 1989-90, in 1992, 1994, ’97, and ’98 – maybe the best
individual example was the 1998 Firecracker 400, run in October due to Florida
wildfires; the cars spread out quite graphically, and two ten-car melees erupted
anyway. It has also been true in Grand National, and before 2001 as well. And it
should not bear repeating that driver deaths and multi-car crashes are common to
all racetracks, plate or no plate, etc. So the new aero-clean rule will change
nothing in terms of safety.

NASCAR WILL START TWEAKING – Once the
pitfalls of the new rule appear, NASCAR will begin tweaking the rules as it did
with the 5&5 rule. The tweaks may help somewhat, but overall will not change
the fundamental unsoundness of the aero-clean package. Come October 2002 a larger
greenhouse will reportedly debut at Talladega, but previous testing showed
no reduction in speed, and teams will rake out of the car whatever extra drag is
to be found in a larger greenhouse, and thus nothing will be accomplished.

And when it is all said and done, the roof
spoiler will be returned, because the sport will have found that aerodynamically
nothing else works – the drag the roof spoiler creates cannot possibly be raked
out, and the vastly improved draft makes passing easier.

So the sport is wasting its time as it did
with both renditions of the 5&5 rule. That this sport shows such a
persistent inability to learn from its mistakes is galling. NASCAR should not
have had this meeting to start with, because it is too obvious that this new
rule will not succeed.