Some Pre-Texas Two-Steps
Getting ready for Texas, some two-steps:
Darrell Waltrip’s sanity may need to be questioned, not only because he wants
to race again – when FOX Sports showed him in Mark Melling’s shop in that Dodge
#17 Truck, one couldn’t help but wish the crew had taped his mouth shut – but
also because he’s repeatedly claimed that Goodyear’s hard tire has been good to
racing. Actually it hasn’t, and Rusty
Wallace is among the few right now to point this out – "This hard, hard
tire….causes single-file racing."
And of course aerodynamics will plague ability to pass at Texas like
aerodynamics plagues ability to pass everywhere, even the short tracks. Wallace
argues that "we’ve gone from 5.5 (inch spoilers in 1998) to 6.5, and we
need to be somewhere in the middle." Actually the spoilers need to be even
higher and with similar spoilers elsewhere on the car for raw drag – pointing
yet again to an issue that won’t go away and which no one is addressing
properly.
The issue of Texas’ racing groove has been touched on over the days of the
sport’s first bye-week, but until the last few days remarkably little attention
had been paid to efforts at the track to carve in a higher groove. The Richard
Petty Driving Experience school has driven its cars consistently through the
higher lines to carve in a second groove; a weighted sled has been pulled around
the track without stop for days to further carve in a second groove; and
"The Tire Monster," a machine that drags tires to lay down rubber, has
also been at work.
Should it work, it will be a remarkable turnaround for the track, a track
plagued by controversy since its opening.
What happened to Andy Petree’s #33 team? It may be morphed into Bill
Baumgardner’s embryonic Winston Cup team.
The news that BACE Motorsports has allied with Petree indicates that Petree
may have found an outlet of sorts for his #33 outfit. While that team will run
at Talladega in April and presumably the other plate races with Mike Wallace,
one can reasonably expect most of the #33 equipment and engines to wind up as
Chad Little’s #74 cars.
The brief history of such satellite deals is mixed, though – the Wood
Brothers team is now a Roush Racing satrapy and the #21 has won again as such;
Jim Mattea morphed the #7 into a satellite SABCO team 1999-2000 – using up the
ex-#46 cars driven by Wally Dallenbach and Jeff Green – but that ultimately
didn’t work out and the #7 wound up a Jim Smith Ford before becoming a Ray
Evernham satellite. And there was also Travis Carter’s reborn team – beginning
life as a satellite third Junior Johnson outfit in 1994, it broke into its own
in 1995 before the bottom fell out at Kmart this season.
As for Travis Carter’s team, ARCA champ Frank Kimmel will drive for it at
Texas with his ARCA sponsors. Right now, though, it’s difficult to see the
combination going far, given how low Carter’s team has sunk and given that no
ARCA champion has made a name for himself in NASCAR since Benny Parsons in 1970.
ARCA has had a rich history over its many decades, but lately it’s been a
difficult task for its drivers trying to move up. Tim Steele may have been the
club’s biggest winner of all, and his forays into NASCAR proved disastrous,
between injury at Atlanta in 1997 and his ultimately unsuccessful campaign in
the Craftsman Trucks in 1999.
There was also Tracy Leslie, a late-80s ARCA champ who for awhile dominated
Talladega. In the early ’90s his ARCA team owner Ron Parker purchased L.D.
Ottinger’s team and the #72 Oldsmobile became a Chevy in 1993 and Leslie won a
slam-bang demo derby at IRP in 1993. But in late 1995 Leslie was axed from the
team and Todd Bodine jumped in and won a three-abreast photo finish at
Rockingham in his first start in the #72. Leslie campaigned his own team in 1996
and joined Hubert Hensley’s team in 1997, but ultimately none of it went
anywhere and Leslie wound up back in ARCA.
And there was Jimmy Horton, who exploded to five straight ARCA super speedway
triumphs in 1990 in a George Smith Pontiac. His success got him a Winston Cup
ride with Rick Hendrick when Darrell Waltrip got injured at Daytona. However it
lasted only three races, and when the Smith ride went away Horton joined Active
Racing for both NASCAR and ARCA in 1992-3. The #32 Chevy team ran well in ARCA
but struggled in NASCAR; its most famous highlight was tumbling out of Talladega
in 1993, and by 1994 Dick Trickle was driving the #32 and Horton wound up
returning to ARCA in 1995 – where he barely survived a horrendous hit at
Atlanta; Horton hit a spinning car, flipped over, then got nailed in the roof by
Ed Dixon – and eventually came back to his roots, Jersey area dirt tracks, where
he’s been quite successful in recent years.
So in the last decade ARCA has had a lot of bad luck in seeing its drivers
advance in stock car ranks. ARCA of course has operated for several decades
without a fraction of the resources to be found at higher levels; whether this
helps explain the lack of bigger-league success for their stars, I don’t know.
Certainly talent-wise there’s no major reason why ARCA drivers cannot reach the
top level with success. If Frank Kimmel can get something going with Travis
Carter, that will benefit the both of them – as well as ARCA.
Speaking of Jimmy Horton, an example of the success he’s had in Jersey-area
bullrings – at Bridgeport Speedway the night before Easter, Horton started the
25-lap big block mod feature in sixth. Horton clawed past Wade Hendrickson for
second at Lap Seven, and with ten to go had closed on leader Steve Bottcher. He
tried Bottcher in Four and the two got together; the two battled for the point
for several laps, and Horton squeezed through with two to go for his 99th
Bridgeport win.
Now can one accuse Jimmy Horton of being a dirty driver? Perhaps – Bridgeport
Speedway is a dirt track.
While NASCAR’s big boys try to tame Texas, also racing the first weekend of
April are the Featherlite Modifieds in Thompson (CT) Speedway’s Icebreaker. The
name lives up to itself as the winter has finally given way. Among the items
from the Mod Squad is the news about Tommy Cravenho. A winner with such teams as
Mario Fiore and the late Len Boehler, Cravenho was axed from Boehler Racing when
they cut to one car for Jerry Marquis, but has now landed with Joe and Linda
Brady’s #00 for the Icebreaker. The Brady Bunch team had cut back their schedule
in recent seasons but may now be poised to run the full season should
sponsorship allow.
There are some other questions going into Thompson – the biggest involve Bob
Garbarino’s #4 Dodge, and driver Reggie Ruggerio, a driver apparently available
after four years with the Iguana Racing #2 Pontiac with which he contended for
the 2000 championship. Writer Bruce Boucher speculates The Reg will slide into
Garbarino’s Mystic Missile at Thompson – an intriguing tandem should it develop.
If the last two Octobers at Thompson are any guide, Winston Cup won’t hold a
glove for chaos and wildness with Thompson’s events – certainly Talladega last
October didn’t have anything on Thompson for that.