Athletic Aero Push Assignment & Other Pre-Banquet Babble
Testing, testing, one two three…..
No, wait, in NASCAR they don’t count with numbers, they count like this –
Donnie Allison, Rod Osterlund, Dale Earnhardt, Morgan-McClure, etc.
Silliness aside, serious testing is about to commence, with Dodge scheduled
for Talladega, Ford having Kentucky Speedway to itself all month, and just about
everyone slotting into test sessions at Lakeland, FL, area short tracks, and
whatever else they can beg, borrow, and deal (hey, that would make a great game
show concept!) out of NASCAR.
GM teams have been shaking down their new aero-matched cars, and the usual
"They’re great" quotes are coming in. We won’t of course know for real
until the season starts. One thing will come true next year regardless – the
hope that there will be no more politicking for rules breaks will not stop.
Those who think aero-matching will eliminate such politicking need remember the
results of Atlanta wind tunnel tests, which showed substantial differences
between makes (even the aero-matched Ford and Dodge) and also substantial
differences between years – no make made the same down force in 2002 as in 2001.
Reducing down force is still a goal for John Darby. "We getting to that
reduction (of 20% down force)," he told Speedway Scene (November 29 issue).
But given past experience we still need to question whether reducing down force
is really the right way to go.
It doesn’t help that the real problem with the aero push remains
misunderstood. Mike Snow of Speedway Scene displays such when he writes that in
the old days "the drivers would gain position by closing on the car in
front of them and taking air off the rear spoiler," which would loosen the
lead car up to where he’d slide up and the trailing car would then dive into the
ensuing hole. With increased down force, so this particular line of thought
goes, there is no longer any possibility of loosening a lead car out of the
groove.
The problems with this line of thought are twofold. First, the majority of
passing in the old days was NOT done by loosening a car out of the groove,
though this certainly did happen. The majority of passing was done by drafting
to the lead car and beating him into the corner, either high or low,
particularly on tracks with long straights like Pocono, Michigan, and the old
Ontario Motor Speedway. If one views old Car & Track episodes or other
vintage NASCAR film/video, one sees how the draft helped with passing a great
deal, not only on the restrictor-plate tracks but also the intermediate
"cookie cutter" quad-ovals like Charlotte.
The power of the draft also greatly assisted air-off-the-spoiler passing, and
a fact under appreciated is that when GM came out with high-down force W-bodies
in 1995-6 (the real beginning of the down force era of today), the power of the
draft actually increased on intermediate super speedways because with increased down force
came increased drag; the 1995 World 600 and Pocono Summer 500 in particular saw
so much draft-passing that it became an issue in title chase, ad even made Chris
Economaki’s editorial page at National Speed Sport News.
What happened after that was that teams and manufacturers were able to rake
out the extra drag from the down force being made, to where dirty air is doing
the opposite of what it is supposed to do. The cars now had the down force, but
the drag penalty paid was not the same anymore.
The second problem with the reduced down force line of argument lies in the
major reason why down force was put into the cars – because of a rash of
episodes in the late ’80s and early 1990s of cars crashing because they lost down force
on their rear decks. Such air-off-the-spoiler wrecks became so common that
during the above-mentioned May 1995 Charlotte weekend Gary Nelson warned drivers
not to race abreast through the turns because cars were losing all the air on
their rear spoilers.
The upsurge in down force since 1995 has seen one positive effect above all
else, a massive reduction in air-off-the-spoiler crashes. This is something that
needs to be kept in mind in the mania for reduced down force.
Instead of reducing down force, adding drag and a bigger draft would achieve
the same ends, making passing possible again, without sacrificing car stability.
A bigger draft would also make for much better racing.
While dealing with the aero push remains the primary issue in the sport,
another issue comes in criticism of race drivers from the Miami Herald’s Jeff
Miller.1
Miller derides the assertion that race drivers are athletes. "Sorry, but
driving a vehicle does not make you an athlete." Miller continues,
"These kinds of arguments often are flawed because the premise is flawed.
The question should be, Are their activities athletic?"
Miller caustically replies no, because he argues that steering, shifting, and
stepping on the gas cannot possibly be athletic skills. "Now, clearly,
competing in NASCAR or any other circuit requires a mind that can move as fast
as the car. Coordination, foresight, and guts are necessities. There is no doubt
that drivers are pushed physically, too, sweating away pounds through their fire suits."
Miller derides all this, because "the nimble moves are orchestrated by
the driver, but they are performed by the car."
Denigrating the physical punishments drivers take weakens Miller’s argument,
because "driving 500 miles in a circle" requires far greater stamina
than is displayed by other athletes. Take the recent Buffalo Bills-Miami
Dolphins game, for instance. Drew Bledsoe took hits, threw the ball to
receivers, and so forth in a snowstorm, as did his teammates. But they also got
breathers, periods to rest, get a drink of Gatorade, and regroup. Race drivers
get no such Time Outs; the only rest they get is under cautions that never fly
at any kind of regular interval. In the Autumn 500 at Talladega, they didn’t
even get that; they ran 500 miles without a yellow, and only ten-second rest
during green-flag stops (this is part of the reason why I hate caution-free
races).
The act of driving the racecar in competition taxes the body and the mind far
more than any other athletic endeavor, or just about any endeavor short of
military combat. There is literally nothing in sports where the participant is
stressed for longer sustained periods than in racing.
And to denigrate the mental angle is also grossly flawed in Miller’s
argument. There is no sport that isn’t a mental game. Football is often won and
lost on mental games – Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots has won many
games by out-psyching the opposing team on schemes; it was his scheme that was
credited with neutralizing the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl Thirty-Six.
"(Driving the racecar) can be performed by athletes, sure, but they also
can be performed by librarians, bank tellers, and computer geeks who sweat less
frequently than their laptops do." Except this is not true. Stock cars are
not passenger cars – they are looser, much faster, and more difficult to
control. The simple truth of the matter is that NOT ANYONE can race a racecar.
It is a simple truth that Jeff Miller shows zero understanding of.
Finally, why the rock-pop orientation of the banquet this year? I can
understand Sheryl Crow’s presence (are the rumors of a thing between her and
Dale Junior true?), but a little more refinement ought to be in order as well.