Shootout Summation – Bring Back The Roof Spoiler
The Daytona Shootout has been run, and the verdict is what we all knew it
would be going in – in aero-clean format the cars are vastly less raceable. Some
of the early dicing was good, but after about ten laps the cars just stayed in
line and could not pass.
Remember all that talk about how now the drivers had to plan their passes and
strategize more? I have to laugh at such rhetoric, because what happened was
that nobody could DO ANYTHING with the draft as lifeless as it was; at the
finish the ONLY passing occurred because the top four were lifting to try and
get a run and Gordon shot the gap up high. With the roof spoiler the drivers
could plan passes and execute them – aero-clean the leaders just stayed where
they were and generally could not be dislodged. "What the fans saw today,
that’s all we got," Dale Junior pined afterward.
It was everything that is wrong with present-day stock car racing. The draft
was ineffective in this race and over the years has been that, inconsistent, or
both as the cars became round and horsepower increased. The cars were impeded by
handling and drivers could not make up lost track position on the racetrack. The
damned aero-push was back.
It will of course be said that this race was safer because the cars spread
out, but the 2001 Shootout ran caution-free with the cars three abreast for the
lead on back lap after lap, and in 2002 we saw several near-hits – a slide job
that nearly took out several cars; blocking; side-slamming amid a four-wide race
down the backstretch. The only difference between this year’s Shootout and last
was that they could pass at will last year; other than that safety wasn’t
changed at all. The dichotomy between safety and ferocity of competition was
disproved yet again.
And yet people still persist in drawing it up. "(Nowadays) everyone
understands that safety is imperative and should probably take precedence over
putting on a good show," Mark Martin claimed in a February 8 story in the
Miami Herald. Why? Why does the competition have to suffer for something
(safety) that isn’t even relevant to it? That the five drivers who were killed
2000-1, and those killed in the ten years before then, all died running by
themselves or in two-car crashes – crashes that had nothing to do with close
racing – needs to be remembered because it persistently forgotten, and shows how
irrelevant the ferocity of the racing is to safety.
So bring back the roof spoiler. No arguments, no debate – just bring it back
and make it a permanent feature of racecars at all tracks. The roof spoiler
works – it adds drag the teams cannot overcome; it makes passing easier, to
where drivers don’t have to shove others aside to pass (didn’t Marlin and
company claim aero-clean would reduce blocking?). There really isn’t any
downside to the roof spoiler.
NASCAR initially said there won’t be any changes until after the 125s on
Thursday, but they didn’t even wait that long; following a post-race wind tunnel
test the Fords got another quarter-inch shaved off their rear spoiler. This
should help the Fords run better with reduced drag, but did anyone think about
the risk of air-off-the-spoiler crashes with less spoiler on the Fords?
Mike Helton has also acknowledged that NASCAR has thought about issuing
larger restrictor plates before the 500, but such won’t help increase passing –
only a stronger draft can do that.
A big atta-boy to Stew Reamer of Promoters Workshops for telling off Dr. Sid
Watkins. Watkins, the medical consultant with F1, chastised American short track
racing safety, calling for "unsanctioned" short tracks to be closed –
"Police should go in and break them up…" – in National Speed Sport
News’ January 30 issue. In the paper’s 24 Hours of Daytona issue Reamer hits
back.
"I don’t know how many races he has seen at American short tracks – if
any," Reamer stews, "but to suggest that because racing is
unsanctioned it is unsafe is ludicrous……(the so-called experts do not
understand) that the majority of the deaths will occur on short tracks because
that’s where most of the racing takes place." Reamer notes that the
industry’s greatest weakness lie not in safety – "over the years they have
developed and accepted more and more stringent safety rules and implemented them
at most tracks" – but in rising costs, occasional weak business management,
and failure to grasp racing as a sporting event.
Reamer also delivers an overdue shot at the Charlotte Observer and Orlando
Sentinel: "I find it interesting – and a revealing commentary on today’s
newspaper business – that these two papers, both in areas where racing has a
huge economic impact, have elected to publish attacks on the sport. Racing is
being painted as a revisitation of the Christians versus the lions."
Meanwhile, a coroner’s report on the nonparticipant fatality in F1’s
Australian GP in 2001 concluded that it could have been prevented – uh, Sid
Watkins, what does that say about your own racing body’s safety?
Speaking of safety, Jeff
Burton said in USA Today, "My big fear is, what happens if someone gets
hurt with all the safety stuff?" Don’t you mean when, Jeff? We saw David
Pook break his neck wearing the HANS; eventually a driver will die of a basilar
skull fracture while wearing a head restraint and so forth. Maybe then we’ll
stop pretending that add-on devices like the HANS are the right approach and
instead work to drastically slow these cars down.
When Tony Stewart gave his little salute to Earnhardt in victory lane, it hit
me that Stewart did something Senior was incapable of doing – he won back to
back Shootouts. Neil Bonnett and Ken Schrader were the only other drivers to
double-up in the Clash/Shootout.
The surprising big losers of the Shootout were Ray Evernham’s team – Bill
Elliott ran okay for awhile but finished in the back, while Casey Atwood broke
his oil pump belt.
Dodge, for its part, is beginning to get a bit ticked; it was noted that
since November five rule changes have penalized the Dodges. It may not matter,
though – the longer Dodge works, the more success it will get.