{"id":254,"date":"2001-10-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-10-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/archive-246-the-sport-s-competition-and-crash-myopia\/"},"modified":"2001-10-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2001-10-26T00:00:00","slug":"archive-246-the-sport-s-competition-and-crash-myopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/archive-246-the-sport-s-competition-and-crash-myopia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sport’s Competition and Crash Myopia"},"content":{"rendered":"

If NASCAR were any other sport, the
\nmini-assault of six drivers into the NASCAR trailer after the Alabama 500 would
\nhave earned those drivers five-figure fines for unprofessional conduct. As it
\nwas, NASCAR would probably be well advised to pass out such fines – certainly
\nthose drivers were no less guilty of unacceptable deportment than crew chief
\nLarry Carter in accosting Kevin Harvick during a pit stop under a yellow.<\/p>\n

Sterling Marlin’s outburst earned a
\nmuch-needed retort from Dean
\nMcNulty<\/a> in the Toronto Sun, who reminded all that these drivers’ job is to
\nrace as hard as they can, and that if they don’t remember that, they’re in the
\nwrong business.<\/p>\n

There was also Dave
\nCasey’s piece<\/a> attacking comments made by Benny Parsons on NBC, a piece that
\nhelps personify the myopia that exists in the sport when it comes to competition
\nand crashes. He writes that NASCAR may be taking the "you race when and how
\nwe want you to" tack – one hopes they are, for far from being unacceptable,
\nsuch a tack is necessary in showing the prima donnas who’s in charge here.<\/p>\n

Casey writes about comments that "the
\nbig one" was common at Daytona and Talladega long before the restrictor
\nplates, and asserts there were only "a few of them." This is wrong –
\nmulti-car crashes have always been common at racetracks. Hardly a week goes by
\nduring Stafford’s regular season that half a race field isn’t decimated in
\ncrashes. Hardly a race goes by that Bristol doesn’t decimate more than half of
\nits fields in wrecks.<\/p>\n

Daytona saw 30-car wrecks in 1960 and
\nmulti-car wrecks in ensuing years – February 1969 (killing Don McTavish), July
\n1969, February 1972 (killing Friday Hassler), February 1975, February 1976 (a
\nparticularly nasty six car wreck primarily involving Ramo Stott, Johnny Ray, and
\nSkip Manning), 1979, 1980 (killing Ricky Knotts), 1981 (in the ARCA 200), 1982,
\nand 1986 – and along the way there was an epidemic of airborne crashes far and
\naway worse than anything Bobby Labonte went through at Talladega.<\/p>\n

Talladega saw the 28-car melee of 1973 and
\nmulti-car pileups in 1975 (particularly the fatal Tiny Lund crash), 1979
\n(involving 17 cars), 1981, 1983, and 1986 – all this before restrictor plates.<\/p>\n

And multi-car melees have been common
\nelsewhere – such as Charlotte in 1965 (killing Harold Kite), 1974, ’79, ’80
\n(costing Junior Crouch an arm), 1981, 1986, ’87, ’88, ’92, ’96, ’97, and ’98,
\nand that isn’t counting the running melees that are The Winston weekend – at
\nPocono in 1976, ’79, 80, ’82, ’83, ’86, ’90, ’91, and June 2001 – at Atlanta,
\nwhich has seen more than a few multi-car pileups far worse than anything that
\nhas ever happened at Talladega – and so forth.<\/p>\n

In the early years of restrictor plate
\nracing, multi-car crashes were no bigger than what was already commonplace – the
\ncars were spread out as Sterling Marlin advocates, and in Richard Petty’s 1988
\ntumble that made the crash worse, as he was hit by cars that were over three
\nseconds behind him. It wasn’t until May 1991 that 20-car melees became an issue.
\nThe only reason multi-car crashes in the 1970s and ’80s usually didn’t involve
\nmore cars was that through the ’70s there were no more than ten consistently
\nstrong cars while in the 1980s the number of strong cars didn’t exceed 17.<\/p>\n

This makes nonsense of the clich\u00e9 about
\nhow the plate rules allow "inferior cars" to run with the
\n"best." The dichotomy was never particularly true in the first place,
\nyet it has been used as the scarlet letter in the never-ending debate.<\/p>\n

Then there is the experience of the
\nCraftsman Trucks at Daytona – in two races the Trucks have (barely) skated by
\nwithout restrictor plates, and in 2000 two-thirds of the field crashed out, and
\nten trucks helped tear open the fencing – this even through the Trucks were separated
\non the track more than the cars.<\/p>\n

\n

And along the way it displays the myopia
\ninherent in the debate. The simple fact is that separating the cars DOES NOT
\nimprove safety. No serious race fan can claim that there hasn’t been many a
\nmulti-car wreck at every racetrack there is, and given that "the big
\nones" never involve even peripheral injury, the frequent use of "it’s
\na miracle no one got hurt" is maddeningly foolish. Where are drivers more
\nlikely to get hurt – in a crash where they’re so packed together there’s no
\nmomentum before impact, or a crash where they’re spread out, and trailing cars
\nget a running start before impact?<\/p>\n

The answer should be obvious, and it
\nshould be obvious that the answer makes nonsense of the whining about "the
\nbig one." Ricky Craven suffered injuries in a 1996 Talladega melee – he got
\nhurt worse in a subsequent horrendous hit at Charlotte and hurt worse again in
\n"little" crashes at Atlanta, Darlington, and finally Texas. Dale
\nEarnhardt suffered sternum injury in his 1996 Talladega tumble – but his worst
\ninjuries were at Pocono in his early years and his death came in a two-car crash
\nuniversal to all racetracks. Bill Elliott was involved in a huge Talladega crash
\nin 1998 – his worst injuries came in a single-car flight there in 1996, and in a
\nthree-car melee at Fontana a week after his Talladega crash. The five drivers
\nlost in the last two years were killed in one- or two-car crashes. The drivers
\nlost in multi-car crashes listed above – notably Friday Hassler and Tiny Lund –
\nwere killed in wrecks where the cars were spread out up to the length of Daytona
\nor Talladega’s backstretch.<\/p>\n

The dichotomy drawn between the size of
\nthe crash and its lethality is a bogus one. It is akin to the Armed Forces’
\nmuch-criticized approach of constantly preparing for another World War when its
\nstrength it crippled by myriad small combats. The size of the crash matters less
\nthan its brutality, and the smaller crashes are ALWAYS the harder hits.<\/p>\n

It is a PURELY NOTIONAL improvement in
\nsafety, and for such people advocate castration of the greatest racing ever
\nseen? That’s all it is – a PURELY NOTIONAL improvement in safety. No one can
\npretend that Daytona and Talladega don’t offer by far the most competitive
\nracing in the world – as great as the IRL at Texas was this season, even that
\ndoesn’t quite measure up to Talladega for sheer ferocity of competition.<\/p>\n

Yet the crashes singled out are the
\naccordion-style "big ones" such as at Talladega this past October. And
\nto "solve" this, we see the following recommended changes:<\/p>\n