Postscript To A Bizarre Summer 500
It was a Dodge weekend.
Robert Pressley opened things up by winning the Craftsman Truck 200 at
Michigan. Casey Atwood then won the ARCA Summer 200 at Pocono in a ray Evernham
R&D car. Saturday then wrapped when Hank Parker Jr. played the fuel game to
win at Pikes Peak.
Dodge then dominated the Summer 500. While the Roush Fords showed great form
they didn’t have quite enough at the end, and Bill Elliott had his second win
with Evernham.
There are feats that are considered unreachable. And for many years one of
the less well publicized was this curious fact – Pocono Raceway had never seen a
driver win more than four times, either in NASCAR or in championship
open-wheelers. The first driver to win four races at Pocono in the major leagues
was A.J. Foyt, winner of the Pocono Indy 500 in 1973, ’75, ’79, and ’81. Rick
Mears won there three times, Danny Sullivan and Al Unser twice, and Mark
Donohue, Joe Leonard, Johnny Rutherford, Tom Sneva, Bobby Unser, Teo Fabi, Mario
Andretti, and Bobby Rahal each won once.
Bill Elliott thus breaks a long-standing record – he is now the first driver
to win five times at Pocono. Curiously, four of his five wins came in July –
June has not been that prolific for repeat winners. In June Bobby Allison, Tim
Richmond, Terry Labonte, Jeff Gordon, and Jeremy Mayfield each have two wins,
while Cale Yarborough, Geoff Bodine, Harry Gant, Darrell Waltrip, Alan Kulwicki,
Kyle Petty, Rusty Wallace, Bobby Labonte, Ricky Rudd, and Dale Jarrett are solo
winners.
July-August, in contrast, sees the following – four wins for Elliott, three
wins for Darrell Waltrip and Rusty Wallace, two wins for Richard Petty, Dale
Earnhardt, Geoff Bodine, Dale Jarrett, and Bobby Labonte, and solo wins for
David Pearson, Benny Parsons, Cale Yarborough, Neil Bonnett, Bobby Allison, and
Harry Gant.
But Pocono’s NASCAR hero remains Tim Richmond, the track’s first four time
NASCAR winner, in July 1983, both 1986 races, and his comeback win of June 1987.
Some of the most exciting history of the event came from Tim’s photo-finish win
over Ricky Rudd and Geoff Bodine in July 1986.
Before all that, Richmond ran well in 1982. He finished second in June, but
in July was involved in one of the most famous crashes in the sport’s history,
slamming the first turn boilerplate with Dale Earnhardt. That run came in J.D.
Stacy’s #2 Buick.
Earlier in 1982, though, Richmond was driving the Fast Company Limited Ford
#29 fielded by Mike Lovern. Harry Hyde was the team’s crew chief and the
travails the short-lived team underwent make for a fascinating story.
"We were trying to run Fords," Lovern says. "Ford made us a
bunch of promises – they wined and dined us pretty hard – if we would run Fords
with Tim and Harry. But it turned out to be a bunch of lies. Jack Roush had
recently left Ford and we were told to buy our engines from him. He sold us
three pieces of junk that Harry couldn’t even use. We had to go to the junkyard
just to get three running engines for Daytona."
The team also struggled with new radios supplied by Motorola. "They
couldn’t get them to work at the track. We had engine problems and a lousy
qualifying speed, and in the 125 Tim worked his way up from the back of the pack
into the top fifteen, but because the radios didn’t work Tim missed a pit stop
and went to the back of the field at the restart. He was once again working his
way to the front when rain red-flagged the race. He was one spot from making it
in when NASCAR stopped the race. One more lap and Tim would have been in the
field."
That Hyde and Richmond did as well as they did "was a miracle. It was a
miracle that Harry was able to put even one engine together with the junk he had
to work with. The Ford executives lied to us, Motorola lied to us, and we had
some bad luck with the rain. Therefore we failed to qualify. Murphy’s Law."
Daytona held a consolation race that year, and Richmond won it, "but
that was no prize with Tim and Harry’s ability." Lovern to this day sees it
as an opportunity lost. "I’d still like to pay Roush back…..he had his
own agenda."
Lovern kept in touch with Richmond and Hyde, and when Tim made his comeback
in June 1987, he had come off a near-fatal bout with double pneumonia. "He
was really sick at the time," Lovern notes. "No one knew how bad
except Harry, myself, and a couple of others."
Like all those who knew Tim Richmond, Lovern to this day still feels Tim’s
loss.
Yep, you just knew there would be whining about how long 500 miles at Pocono
is and how 400 miles is supposedly better. NASCAR has said there have been no
discussions about shorter Pocono races, and there really should not be, because
500 miles there is not too long.
Drivers like Geoff Bodine and Rusty Wallace try to justify shorter races by
citing the one-engine rule, and how hard Pocono is on cars. They turn 9,400 rpms
at Pocono, but if they’re concerned about that, why are they not lobbying NASCAR
to restrict how hard they punish their cars? The one-engine rule was designed in
part to force teams to detune their engines for reliability; to increase
reliability the engines should be detuned even more. A rev limiter set to 7,500
rpms would certainly he helpful.
Teams should be detuning their cars to last for the whole weekend, not
lobbying for shorter races. Shorter races cheat everyone out of the changes in
outcome that usually occur in the extra 100 miles of a 500-miler. That there
have been fewer competitive races at Rockingham and Dover after they shortened
from 500 miles than when they ran 500 miles is a telling indictment of the
argument for shorter distances.
Speaking of engines, one big reason teams shift gears at Pocono is to run a
lower gear off the corners without turning too many rpms down the straights.
Ryan Newman finished fifth and ran the whole race in fourth gear, just like it
was at Pocono until 1991. This is an encouraging sign, for Pocono ought to be
raced as an oval, where drivers don’t shift at all, but instead run fourth gear.
"Shifting is a pain in the butt," Terry Labonte noted in 1992, and it
interferes with ability to pass.
There went Larry McReynolds on SPEED Channel, griping about how Pocono should
pave its infield on the back straights because of the grass and what it did in
Steve Park’s crash. Larry, the issue is not grass, but the speed of the cars.
They’re reaching 200 MPH in top-end when 170-5 is enough there. It’s the same
issue as Loudon last week – the racecars, not the track, are the culprit.
Having said that, the record does show some of the sport’s nastier pileups
occurring at Pocono. The fireworks began with Lennie Pond’s broken shoulder in
1974. Then Bill Hollar spun and Joe Frasson nailed him in the side in 1976.
But it was in 1979 that the track began a string of serious impacts. A
six-car melee exploded in the first turn, then rookie Dale Earnhardt smashed the
Tunnel Turn boilerplate, breaking both collarbones. Richard Petty suffered as
bad in 1980, smashing the Tunnel Turn boilerplate, then getting hit in the door
by Darrell Waltrip. Petty broke his neck in the crash.
After Earnhardt’s wild ride in 1982 a huge three-car melee erupted in 1983,
then Bobby Allison almost blasted through the Tunnel Turn boilerplate in 1984.
1986 proved injurious twice. Buddy Arrington spun in One, came to a stop,
then Morgan Shepherd and Harry Gant plowed into him. In a cruel sequel, Rick
Baldwin drove Arrington’s #67 at Michigan but was grievously injured himself
before the race. Then in July a five-car melee erupted off Two where Neil
Bonnett smashed the inside guardrail, got on his door, and broke his shoulder.
Bobby Allison’s career ended in June 1988 when he spun in the Tunnel Turn and
was T-boned by Chauncy Maggiacomo; his injuries were nearly fatal. His son Davey
didn’t fare much better four years later; off Two he was hooked by Darrell
Waltrip, stood on his nose, and tumbled to the third turn infield. His injuries
required relief drivers in the next two races.
Greg Sacks and Lake Speed then took a wild 1989 ride in One reminiscent of
Earnhardt and Richmond’s 1982 melee. Then in 1991 came a series of crashes
culminating in a ten-car eruption off Three. Chuck Bown was seriously injured in
June 1994 in a first-turn crash with Sterling Marlin. And most recently, in June
1999, Dave Marcis punched the Tunnel Turn concrete (his head nearly struck the
concrete through the window netting), spun five feet in the air, and came to a
rest.
So now we go to Indianapolis, and the Dodges are now beginning to flex some
mass muscle. The Fords, which have pretty much dominated this season, are also
in the hunt, while GM will need quite a few breaks to win there.
The one-engine rule will be griped about, inability to pass will be a big
issue, and given that the last ten races have seen ten different winners, we
might see a new winner this weekend.