The Not-So-Monstrous Monster Mile, Bruton’s Lawsuit Talk, And So On
They may have to change the nickname of Dover Int’l Speedway, for The Monster Mile wasn’t quite so monstrous this weekend. While actually racing there is certainly a chore, the dearth of yellows made for a pretty tranquil and anticlimactic weekend.
The only really newsworthy item was Scott Wimmer’s breakthrough win, his first and also Bill Davis’ first in GN since 1992 with Jeff Gordon – but this time without the outcome being decided by multiple crashes. Wimmer was sponsorless and failed to qualify for the Winston Cup effort, but certainly got a great consolation gift.
The story going in was Goodyear’s softer tires. Rusty Wallace was the most vociferous in demanding softer tires, but the switch to softer tires wound up backfiring on him. His blown right front cost him a lap; Bill Wilburn insisted Rusty had run over debris, but the tire failure looked more consistent with a setup that abuses right fronts – a constant by-product of under-staggered tires, something Goodyear solved in latter-summer 1999. That it happened to Wallace was something of a surprise, since that team usually runs abusive setups but manage to get away with it.
The promised increase in side by side racing with these new tires didn’t materialize; while some cars did run very high grooves, it wasn’t any different from other recent Dover races on concrete. Between a surface (concrete) that does not allow side by side racing, and overpowered, under-gripped, under-staggered, and under-drafting racecars, it stood to reason that the chances of a competitive race weren’t that hot.
The race did shuffle the points race – Mark Martin increased his point lead, but Sterling Marlin may have been eliminated from contention. Jeff Gordon was also all but eliminated from point contention with his crash with Todd Bodine. But he wasn’t too displeased with the weekend, as Jimmie Johnson’s win took some sting out of the disappointment.
The worst off were the Dodges, with no top fifteens to show for their effort. Kyle Petty’s conservative climb to competitive consistency saw another top twenty finish, while all-but-re-signed teammate John Andretti saw a sure top fifteen wiped out by an ill-timed final yellow during green-flag stops, with Jerry Nadeau eliminated early by a rare bite by the Dover mile.
Ward Burton’s crash with Nadeau meant a lousy weekend for BDR’s Winston Cup effort with Wimmer’s DNQ and Kenny Wallace’s typically sub-par run. The Ganassi/SABCO Dodges didn’t run well, and after some early promise the Evernham Dodges had a poor day as well. It all suggests Dodge will have something to say to the NASCAR rules makers after air dam changes and the cylinder width rule change earlier this year.
Amid all that, we saw a rare interview with Bruton Smith this week by John Sturbin and Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.1
Bruton shows he still won’t get it with his comments about a NASCAR monopoly, how he was supposedly promised a Texas date by NASCAR aside from the one he swiped from North Wilkesboro (more on that later – BTW, by now, if such a promise was actually made, wouldn’t proof have come out?), and how “all my adult life I’ve helped build this sport.”
I supposed shutting down North Wilkesboro was in the sport’s best interest, eh? Bruton talks about “what has happened since we built this speedway.” No, Bruton, let’s look at what happened AROUND the time you built your speedway. Wayne Huizenga built Homestead Miami Speedway and got a Grand National and Craftsman Truck date right away. Las Vegas Motor Speedway was built a year later and got a Craftsman Truck date, then got a Grand National date. Before Bruton bought LVMS, it got a Winston Cup date – and ISC never had an ounce of involvement in the track’s creation. Where was the “monopoly,” Bruton?
Let’s also look at what Bruton was doing. He’d purchased Atlanta International Raceway from the estate of L.G. DeWitt in 1990. In 1995 he began building Texas, then bought North Wilkesboro and swiped its spring date – Bob Bahre got involved on the heels of Bruton, got the September date for NHIS, but tried to keep the track open for Grand National and Truck races, only to be rebuffed by Bruton. Bruton then bought Bristol International Raceway from Larry Carrier and bought Sears Point International Raceway, and then went after North Carolina Motor Speedway with what was an almost public desire to close it and use its dates for Texas and possibly Las Vegas; he lost a lawsuit to get the track and ISC now owns it. Bruton has also eyed buying Pocono Int’l Raceway and closing it down, but has no shot, as ISC was long ago promised the track if the Mattiolis ever sold – and they have no intention of ever doing so.
Bruton’s monopoly talk can only work without the context of his own racetrack piracy and ISC’s action – in RESPONSE to his sprees – looks more like a justified effort to save good racetracks from Bruton’s piracy. So what does it matter that Kansas, Chicagoland, and Homestead are ISC tracks (Homestead became an ISC track pretty much after a Cup date was all but penciled in; ISC’s purchase basically just put a neat little bow on it).
The outstanding quality of Bruton’s rants is their breathtaking arrogance. Texas “deserves” a second date – any more than any other track deserves their second dates? And just who are you, Bruton, to say that North Wilkesboro did not deserve to keep its two dates? Bruton needs to learn that he will get a second date at Texas as soon as he stops pushing NASCAR for it and just leaves it alone.
LEAVE IT ALONE, Bruton.
We’re now learning just how stupid it was to put telemetry boxes into Winston Cup cars. The G-readings acquired in specific crashes look frightening, with spikes of 50 Gs and above – notably 82 Gs in Christian Elder’s crash at Chicagoland – in hits like Bobby Hamilton’s Richmond crash – except that the really severe part of Hamilton’s crash, which appears not to have been measured by the G-readings, was when he got hit by other Trucks, rather than the 50-G hit on the wall.
There is also the astonishingly bogus reading that Mike Harmon’s dead-stop implosion crash at Bristol measured only 36 Gs. A measly 36? The figure is fraudulent on its face, and shows how deceptive these boxes really are.
All they show is what has been obvious from the start – that these cars are too fast and the severity of the hits shows it. The sport has too much technology already and needs to start divesting itself of technology, to get the racing back where it needs to be. The telemetry boxes aren’t telling us anything we don’t already know and thus serve no purpose.
Originally scheduled for September 25 was another test of low down force at Daytona, a test now postponed until November, presumably after the season ends. The results of the first test some weeks back were as expected unproductive – low down force certainly didn’t make anyone lift, which is not the way to go in any event – and this new test likely will only show what we already know – low down force equals unsafe cars and boring racing.
One team owner, commenting on the fact that top teams have not participated in the tests because of the costs involved, asked in National Speed Sport News, “Why should we pay for that kind of money (to test) to help them write their rules?”
Probably because it was teams and team owners who kept lobbying NASCAR for changes at Daytona and Talladega and now have seen lobbying for lower down force require testing. If teams had left the roof spoiler package alone in the first place, there would be no need for this testing. But teams had to act like scared kids and scream that the racing was too close (except there is no such thing as too much close racing) and now this is what they’ve gotten.
Ultimately these teams need to shut up and race. They made this present mess – they should be the ones lobbying to clean it up via reversion to the roof spoiler rule.