Full Throttle

NASCAR has suspended all testing at its sanctioned tracks next season in a cost-cutting measure that should help teams save several million dollars in their 2009 budgets.

The moratorium, which includes the traditional “preseason” Daytona 500 testing, is for NASCAR’s top three divisions. Teams cannot test at any track where a Sprint Cup, Nationwide Series or Truck Series event is held.

In general I’ve been in favor of unlimited testing knowing full well where there’s a loophole in a NASCAR rule owners and crew chiefs will go through it at the speed of light.

When limits were first introduced for the 2006 season it was obvious to all but the deaf, dumb and blind those with the wherewithal to circumvent the edict would. The later part of the 2005 season saw teams hoard Goodyear tires in preparation for a testing regimen that included thousands of laps run at tracks not in possession of a NASCAR Sprint Cup sanction.

The ensuing years have turned out to be a financial boon for tracks like Virginia International Raceway, Kentucky Speedway and Iowa Speedway as teams flocked to facilities that mirrored in shape and length tracks that were on the Sprint Cup schedule.

The latest financial sink hole has been special testing teams formed by the sports largest owners and reportedly testing budgets that littered the countryside with $100,000 per day invoices.

I see the need given the financial times to forego all testing but as Jimmie Johnson points out The Loophole is this there and there’s also the not-so-small matter of auto racing’s Golden Rule - Money Spent, Equals SPEED!

“I think it’s a mistake,” said Jimmie Johnson, who’s poised to win his third consecutive Sprint Cup Series title. “I do understand and recognize that we need to cut expenses. … Now we’re going to need to focus on other ways to collect data or create simulation programs or machines to create on-track activity and then test at tracks that may not work and on tires we won’t race on and try to find a baseline.

“It’s going to slow things down and make it more expensive. We still have to get on the track. We still have to test. We cannot sit still.”

“At the end of the day, speed equals dollars. It’s the formula in racing, it’s the way it works,” Johnson said. “At the end of the day, the only way we’re going to beat Roush, or Childress or Yates or Ganassi or any of the teams out there, is by finding more speed and technology and that takes money to do. No matter how you try to fold the rules, you can’t change that.

“We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to win.”

Precisely.

Although I’ll give credit for this much. Without mandated testing the financial burden is wholly on the team owners. Only they know with any certainty when and where their budgets allow testing at unsanctioned tracks.

If the additional non-mandated testing or any other extra expenditures cause a team to be NASCAR’s version of the Mary Celeste so be it, at least they can’t point a finger at Charlotte or Daytona.

On the other hand, they could take the suggestion of Full Throttle’s Half-Vast Staff as indicted by the “Pictorial Essay” included above, but somehow I don’t think they will listen.

Too bad, I could use the extra cash generated by rental of the “track” I have access to.