Nascar 2015 season

Jr!

 

I braced myself for the "Dale Earnhardt ghost looking over the #88 and #3" memes on facebook today. Surprisingly there were none. Probably has to do with my unfollowing all the people posting "Confederate History Lesson" posts over the last two weeks. Interesting to see how a single accident ripped a gaping maw in the new $400 million dollar Daytona Rising front stretch safety fence. This is the third fence penetration at Daytona in two years, third at a restrictor plate in the past six years. Restrictor plates were slapped on after Bobby Allison's wicked Talladega wreck in '88. There were no fence penetrations until 2009. NASCAR needs to look at the plate track package and reassess nearly three decades of bandaids.

 

I thought restrictor plates came to be after bill elliot ran a 212 mph lap

 

While I agree with you about fence penetrations, what you fail to realize is drivers in that era raced more cautiously due to lack of safety equipment. We are seeing a "never before seen" type of racing where everyone is nearly identical as terms of speed and it creates this type of nose to bumper racing every lap, thereby creating a last lap bump and run to the finish, throwing cars airborne, etc. what needs to happen is nothing. The catch fence did its job, no one was seriously hurt in the stands (by the way they need to move the stands back away from the track); and we had a great race. Racing is a very dangerous sport, and in part why we are all intrigued by it. I thought the safety crew and the safety fences/wall did a fantastic a job, all they need to do is keep fans safer. Decreasing HP does nothing as the cars will still race and penetrate fences, moving fans back away from fences is the better move.

 

No it was after Bobby Allisons crash after he blew a tire at talledega and tore up a lot of fence that they started putting restrictor plates in motion for the 2nd time, for Daytona and talledega, the two fastest tracks as a safety measure. First brought up in the 70s though I believe. Then official early 90s.

 

X2

Everything and everybody looks like it did its job.

 

Same weekend. Bill was on pole. Bobby wrecked during the race and ripped the fence down pretty hard. Most sports commentators from the era said it was the end for NASCAR if they didn't do something. For more history on spectator tragedies, look into Le Mans in 1955. The Le Mans tragedy was, and still is, fresh in the minds of track promoters and insurance folks. The 1955 Le Mans tragedy almost ended auto racing worldwide. Bobby Allison's wreck was the closest thing to what happened in Le Mans and NASCAR acted fast.

"Racing is a very dangerous sport, and in part why we are all intrigued by it." -Very good words. This sentiment echoes Ken Squier's great quote "ordinary men doing extraordinary things."

I didn't fail to realize driver's cautionary racing style and lack of safety, I failed to mention it. I agree with you on that point. I think there's more engineering left on the table as far as catch fences go. I was watching when Dan Wheldon took a post to the head. I remember seeing the blood spurting out of his cockpit like a water sprinkler. Kyle Larson was very lucky in 2013. Same goes for Geoff Bodine in '03(?). There was the teenage girl in Alabama who now has a titanium jaw thanks to Carl Edwards who probably thinks the fences could be better. The catch fence last night caught Austin's car unlike any wreck I've ever seen. It caught him and threw him back down on the track mere yards away from the impact. He didn't skirt down the fence like a block of cheese on a grater. It was sick. To think one minute your going 200mph and 2 seconds later you're at zero mph. That's hard for the body and tougher for the brain. He's probably feeling it a bit today and will certainly feel it tomorrow. I agree about moving the seats back. They're doing it at a lot of high speed tracks. I noticed it at Darlington last year and Atlanta a few months ago. I don't think Talladega is doing it yet. Daytona is moving things back substantially with the new grandstands. Younger drivers like this style of racing while the older drivers, who came of age during that era are more cautious and vocal about the lunacy of modern plate racing. Unfortunately, there are less and less of those guys on the track or even in the spotlight anymore. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, so for anyone else who didn't follow the sport back then here's a refresher on how we got to now:

The restrictor plate was a stop gap measure. Early restrictor plate races still featured strung out racing around the track. It wasn't until the late '90s (and the NASCAR TV boom), that they tweaked and tweaked spawning the predictable Big One's, flips, and fireballs at the finish line. NASCAR tweaked superspeedway packages more and more over the years because three wide racing and the potential for major accidents increased ratings. Lots more people tuned in for the plate races, unfortunately, more plate races were ending under caution, so they implemented the Green White Checker rule (AKA overtime, GWC). NASCAR messed around with the diameter of the restrictor plate holes each year, so pole speeds vary from the low 180's to the upper 190's. NASCAR also messed around with body packages so the packs would tighten up. They didn't want anyone to run away. During this time, the pileups were so big, teams actually installed escape hatches in the roof of the cars in case the roll cage didn't hold up around the cockpit. NASCAR went so far as to bolt on 90 degree roof rails to pop a bigger hole in the air and bunch up the cars. Check out Dale's car in the 2001 Daytona 500 to see it. Meanwhile, engineers crept into the sport and downforce numbers and aero became the name of the game. Then there was the "crabbing" around 2008. NASCAR implemented the No-Passing below yellow line rule at some point which did nothing but stir controversy about their inconsistent enforcement. The cars got much safer (thankfully), the drivers younger and bolder. Younger & bolder brought along bump drafting a tandems. Pack racing on plate tracks used to be "hook up on straight, back off in turn because LESS GRIP, then hook back up on the straight. Daytona repaved after the pothole debacle a couple years ago and now the place is fast all the way around, so the guys pushed each other all the way around. If you have a chance to talk to an old timer, ask them about plate racing. Darrell Waltrip is annoying on TV but he's a wealth of knowledge off camera. He was kind enough to take me under his wing when I was a kid mulling about in the CUP garage. I've not had the opportunity to speak with any younger, current drivers as the sport has changed drastically and the garage isn't what it was when I was a kid.

I probably omitted some stuff here. I'm trying to get a 4 year old race fan to bed.

Here's some video footage and further reading if you're interested:

1987 Talladega crash:
https://youtu.be/K8tMKNnu-3Y

Further reading:
http://espn.go.com/racing/nascar/cup/story/_/id/7874497/nascar-talladega-87-changed-sport-forever

Additionally, I have a NASCAR rule book from '89 explaining the restrictor plate issues and future plans to downsize engines to keep speeds down. They planned to move CUP to V6's; hence Busch Grand National's V6 experiments in the 80's & 90s. Those engines tended to not hold up to high compression very well. Their other stop gap plan was to downsize to 305s. Jack Roush poked a hole in that plan by building a 305 CUP engine in the early '90s that went just as fast as the 350/351ci engines.

band aid #1 Restrictor plate
band aid #2 90 degree roof rail edit: "Wicker Bar"
band aid #3 GWC rule
band aid #4 taller spoilers
band aid #4.5 Escape hatches
band aid #5 sharkfins
band aid #6 yellow line rule

I'm optimistic about the 2016 rules package they are trying out at Kentucky later this summer. We'll see shorter side skirts, narrower splitters and a spoiler practically chopped in half. These are good moves for competition. It should also make for more passing and possibly good TV (that's another story for another day). Personally, I think the ideal overall rules package setup would be to chop that spoiler WAY down, narrow up the tires, go back to bias ply tires, get ride of the splitter, front air dam and side skirts, give 'em all the horsepower they can handle to get away from each other and make them back off the gas in the turns. But that will never happen.

tl/dr:

I like to talk about technical NASCAR history. My wife doesn't understand why I have so many books about the subject.

 

"Wicker Bar:"


"I do recall one February when NASCAR stood pat with its rules package. That was the now-notorious "wicker bill package" with metal strips across the tops of the cars so that they knocked huge holes in the air and created a scrambled, kaleidoscopic show.
Nobody paid enough attention to the one man who was howling loudest that the cars were even more squirrelly than usual. Dale Earnhardt was always complaining about restrictor-plate racing anyway. The ol' boy was crying wolf again. Right?

That was 2001. We all know what came of that. Late in the race, Earnhardt told his crew on the radio that the package was going to get somebody killed before it was over with.

When it was over with, it was he.

The wicker bill package was changed after the race."

source: http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/nascar/cup/columns/story?columnist=hinton_ed&id=6118925

 

I think everything worked as well as it could. The catch fence caught the car, the front of the car ripped away, the cage in the car protected the driver. The spectators do need to be back from the track some.

 

There's really nothing to keep cars from hopping in an accident. It's been happening forever. Here's Greg Sacks and Lake Speed at Pocono in 1989. This was a nasty hop:


video:
https://youtu.be/CFVLk09HCZU

 

And they've flipped at Bristol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1ib5bxdOrc

 

I don't even know what to say about all that nascar history, I thought I knew a decent amount but that takes the cake, kudos to you sir. We may not agree on everything but you know your shit Mad.

 

I wish I didn't know so much about it :/ I invested a lot of time as a kid studying this stuff. Most kids were stats nuts for MLB, NBA, NFL, PGA. I was berserk for NASCAR; more the history than the modern day stuff. I only tune in for 2-3 races a year these days. I go to 1-2 a year for old time sake. I'm young but I gripe about the sport like an old timer sometimes :/ I started watching in '80s and really latched on in '90 & '91. My first race was the Firecracker 400 in '91. I've been to Atlanta more times than I can count (pretty steadily since '92), Daytona three times, Darlington thrice, Charlotte & Talladega once. I spent a lot of time scrapping around in the garages and Bill Elliott's old Dawsonville shop. My cousin's were neighbors with the Petty's so it goes way back with us.

Me in '92:

 

Cool man, I got a pic like that in the ol 28 halvoline Davey Allison car with the black and gold numbers when in Atlanta. Love that pic. It's expensive to go to these days but I make 2-3 trips to either Richmond, martinsville, Charlotte, or darlington. NASCAR isn't what it was, but I embrace what it is today.

 

Isn't that car in the museum at taladega. Been a while since I was there but I think I remember seeing that car on display or, what was left of it.

 

I went to the museum in January. They don't have the wrecked #22 but they do have a refurbed #22. As far as wrecked cars, they have #31 Bonnett from '93, #30 Waltrip from '90 and #41 Craven from '96 or '97.

 

Curious to see how this new Kentucky package races. Smaller spoiler, smaller radiator pan, smaller splitter= less downforce (around 750lbs. Less). Crews will have to rely on more mechanical downforce vs. aero, I.e. Shocks, tires, and sway bar/track bar, etc.

 

T minus 75 minutes

Edit: Math probz doods, now it's 75 min as of 6:30! Lol.

 

They're comin, they're goin, they're loose, great racing, love this package.

 

Looks like KB gets the win, keselowski had the best car but the tire going down with 30 laps to go kind of ruined his W.