They came, they raced, they crashed, and they whined. And when it was over
\nMikey Waltrip played the patsy yet again.<\/p>\n
After Mikey gave the 2001 Firecracker to Junior, Robin Miller angered some
\nNASCAR fans by pointing out that Mikey was supposed to pass Junior and win the
\nrace, not push him to the win. But does anyone seriously think Mikey really
\ntried to get Junior at the stripe at Talladega?<\/p>\n
Thus has the mentality of F1 infected NASCAR – instead of trying to win the
\nrace, Mikey acted as Junior’s blocker all race long. He was Junior’s fall guy in
\nthe 2001 Firecracker and he was Junior’s fall guy in the Grand National 300 at
\nDaytona. At least when Junior won Talladega last October he didn’t have a
\nteammate to block for him – he had to do it all himself.<\/p>\n
And the contrast between October 2001 and April 2002 is all the more evidence
\nof why NASCAR should have pushed those drivers who stormed the red truck last
\nOctober out and fined them for unbecoming conduct. Drivers demanded reversion to
\nan aero-clean package; what resulted shows why the roof spoiler package needs to
\nbe brought back. With the roof spoiler there was so much draft the drivers could
\npass at will and could give up track position and re-pass for it without
\nexcessive difficulty. In aero-clean configuration the cars draft inconsistently
\nand when the draft doesn’t kick in passing is too difficult as a result.<\/p>\n
There is talk of running short-track bodies at Talladega and also of the
\ncoming bigger greenhouse – few remember that when tested last year the bigger
\ngreenhouse car ran faster than the roof spoiler car, because the greenhouse
\nremains a round object over which air passes more effectively than with the roof
\nspoiler. The round nature of the greenhouse is of course the same with the
\noverall bodies, and is why down force and loss of it in dirty air is such an
\nissue everywhere, and not, contrary to the rhetoric behind advocacy of shaving down force
\nfrom the cars, that the cars have too much down force.<\/p>\n
As for short track bodies, teams will do to them what they will do to the
\nbigger greenhouse – rake out whatever drag is imposed. The Atlanta wind tunnel
\ntest showed what should have already been obvious – how teams raked drag and down force
\naround to increase speeds and improve handling; there is zero reason to believe
\nthat a bigger greenhouse or high-down force body will improve anything at
\nTalladega.<\/p>\n
Thus it comes down to the roof spoiler package. This is raw aero-drag, the
\nkind that no amount of raking and engineering can overcome. With the roof
\nspoiler the draft kicked in regardless of anything – and made nonsense of the
\n"Daytona and Talladega are two different racetracks" argument. With
\nthe draft made so strong, passing was no longer a problem.<\/p>\n
The lack of passing at Daytona and Talladega – and everywhere else – this
\nyear ought to make NASCAR bring back the roof spoiler, because it works where
\nnothing else does.<\/p>\n
Over and over people say, "The big one is inevitable at Daytona and
\nTalladega." It is not.<\/p>\n
The rules don’t cause these crashes – the drivers do. Mike Wallace tried to
\npinch Tony Stewart, and succeeded – far too well. In the Grand National race
\nShane Hmiel punted Scott Riggs into Johnny Sauter – whose flight was the
\n50-somethingth (I lost count) since roof flaps were mandated in 1994; is it fair
\nyet to say the roof flaps are a failure?<\/p>\n
At the Daytona 500 Jeff Gordon punted Kevin Harvick. Last October Bobby
\nLabonte threw out his brains, threw Bobby Hamilton to the first turn wall, and
\nwound up getting thrown on his roof. At the 2001 Daytona 500 Robby Gordon hooked
\nWard Burton and Tony Stewart. And on it goes.<\/p>\n
Of the many "big ones" over the years, few were caused by anything
\nother than one driver who didn’t give a damn punting or hooking another car. The
\nrules didn’t force Jeff Gordon to punt Kevin Harvick, nor did they force Bobby
\nLabonte to swerve Hamilton to the wall.<\/p>\n
Labonte’s idiocy last October shows the argument that drivers are forced to
\nblock for what it is – self-deceiving garbage. The IRL’s no-blocking rule works
\nand NASCAR needs to take such a rule into serious consideration – it doesn’t
\naffect passing or holding onto a spot at all; it simply makes drivers leave
\nenough room for a competitor to race.<\/p>\n
If not a no-blocking rule, then NASCAR should yank left-side mirrors out of
\nthe cars and restrict spotters to track condition information only – no more
\n"clear high" "car up high" rhetoric. The spotters should not
\nbe driving these cars as they presently do – Tony Stewart seems to be one of the
\nfew to point this out – and the drivers have enough sense, or ought to, to know
\nwhen they’ve cleared a car. Darrell Waltrip’s argument that drivers’ peripheral
\nvision is too restricted to not need spotters doesn’t particularly wash, though
\nthere is some legitimacy to it.<\/p>\n
As for the two major crashes at Talladega, the term "frightening"
\nhas lost most of its punch through overuse in such situations. Johnny Sauter’s
\nride was the wildest this year and Elliott Sadler took a hard shot in the inside
\nwall, but neither "big one" compares in genuine brutality to Casey
\nAtwood’s crash at Rockingham or Tony Stewart’s hits at Darlington; even
\nStewart’s near-hit at Bristol was far more frightening than anything at Daytona
\nor Talladega.<\/p>\n
This is the silver lining to these "big ones" – the cars being too
\nclose together to hit with truly brutal impact. Separating the cars means far
\nharder hits, and is why the argument for separating the cars for safety doesn’t
\nwash – there isn’t a real safety cushion with greater spacing.<\/p>\n
NASCAR also needs to dump the yellow-line rule.<\/p>\n
There is no legitimate reason for the rule that cost Kenny Wallace 16 spots
\non the last lap and cost Tony Stewart a victory bid last July. The yellow-line
\nrule was imposed only because NASCAR tried to appease the drivers – there was no
\nother reason for it. There is no safety rationale behind the yellow-line rule –
\npassing below the yellow line is going into legitimate passing territory.<\/p>\n
Now all of this naturally takes a back seat to the condition of team owner
\nJack Roush.<\/p>\n
Flying a small plane as part of his 60th birthday celebration, Roush apparently
\nclipped a wire (this is the only information I could find) and flipped into a
\nlake. A former Marine jumped into the lake three times and finally succeeded in
\nrescuing Roush and reviving him.<\/p>\n
As of this writing Roush’s condition has gone from critical to serious, an
\nencouraging sign that he’s coming out of the worst of it – it would seem the
\nvery worst has now passed – and should eventually recover nicely.<\/p>\n
Speaking of comebacks, remember the 1999 Daytona 300? Andy Santarre spun off
\nTwo and clobbered Mikey Waltrip. Santarre was injured enough to miss six months
\nof the ’99 season, but came back and won a Grand National race at Pikes Peak
\nthat year. But he was forced by circumstances back to GN North, and at Lee USA
\nSpeedway he bagged his 11th GN North win, edging Mike Olsen and Mike Johnson.
\nDale Shaw and Stafford Pro Stock grad Matt Kobyluck rounded out the top five.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They came, they raced, they crashed, and they whined. And when it was over Mikey Waltrip played the patsy yet again. After Mikey gave the 2001 Firecracker to Junior, Robin Miller angered some NASCAR fans by pointing out that Mikey was supposed to pass Junior and win the race, not push him to the win. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}