Full Throttle

As expected the winner of Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 is nearly forgotten.

Sure Brad Keselowski’s name has been duly noted as the winner by all outlets that carry NASCAR news but in many cases the coverage seems to be a bridge to get to what they considered the real story, that being, “car-flips-catches-fence-fans-injured-NASCAR-fans-ROARED!”

The media is nothing if not predicable.

Not that their implication is totally unjustified, after doing an extensive tour of blogs and news sites that allow comments on their stories it’s fair to say many fans have taken a so what attitude.

Comments run the gamut from “it’s racing, it’s supposed to be dangerous,” to laying blame on everything from drivers blocking, the yellow line rule, Brian France “ruining” the sport, to the latest version of the NASCAR race car - the CoT.

Then there’s a “special group” of fans that make the case the injured fans knew sitting front and center is dangerous and well, the injuries were “minor.”

To them I’d suggest sitting around a few weeks and eating a ground-up, liquefied porterhouse steak via straw and through a wired-shut mouth. It’s not a diet of choice even for the grossly obese.

First let’s stipulate racing is dangerous and while safety is always paramount it will never be totally safe. Let’s further stipulate every fan fully understands the dangers involved particularly when choosing seats so close to the action.



Let’s be honest, this is a reoccurring problem at Talladega and Daytona, not as one commenter suggested; “Well it’s only happened twice in forty years of Talladega racing,” with obvious reference to Bobby Allison’s infamous take-down of the frontstretch fence.

The Neil Bonnet video (above) of his trip into the Talladega fence lays to waste that thought and all the Daytona events of a similar nature (and yes I include flips that didn’t involve fencing through shear luck in many cases) adds further proof of the problem. (Not to mention Petty’s ‘84 ride along the Daytona fence, see video below)

The larger, and mostly untouched upon problem, is speed and it isn’t just at the two super speedways.

Sunday’s pole speed was 188.171 mph, two weeks ago at Texas 190.517 mph was the gold standard, Atlanta’s pole speed was 187.045 mph and it took 188.536 mph to sit on Michigan’s pole last August, a speed 4 tenths quicker than this years Daytona pole. As a result of the increased speeds many are calling for plates be introduced at Texas, Atlanta, California and Michigan.

Adding to the problem of speed, as practiced at Daytona and Talladega, are speeds attained via restrictor-plated and choked-up engines that have been sapped of all their “get-up and go,” as my Pops used to say.

Plated engines have such low torque, with so little throttle response drivers are forced into playing the “freight train game.” They have to stay in a bunch, tucked up under each other nose-to-tail, or forfeit any chance of competing at a reasonable level. Being hung out to dry works on the clothesline out back but fails the smell test when you’re shuffled from 1st to 20th in one lap.

Think of the scenario at each green flag. Once it flies it takes a restricted engine over one complete lap to reach full song. There’s no other reason for that except engines with no low end torque.

There’s a saying, “no guts no glory.” For restrictor plate racing the saying goes something like, “no guts, no ultimate speed until 2 1/2 to 3 miles are completed.”

NASCAR has made it well known their butter zone for safe speeds is something under 190 mph and they’ve tried to regulate speed based on that figure.

Well NEWSFLASH, Texas has gone over that speed and two weeks saw a pole speed of 190 plus and straight-line speeds of over 200 mph when 2-3 cars were hooked-up in a draft.

It’s time to act and reduce speeds, and reduce them via smaller carbs which would be the cheapest solution, or by cutting back on engine size.

It wouldn’t be a popular move, not much is in the eyes of some, but to those so called fans I defy any of them to visually determine the difference between a car traveling at 190 mph and one that laps at 170-175 mpg.

Finally, to those that want to lay blame on the CoT, “yellow-line” rules at Daytona and Talladega or any other such poppycock, I give you Dale Earnhardt Sr’s. comments from Daytona 2000.

UPDATE: As I started this post I was made aware of a NASCAR teleconference dealing with Sunday’s incidents and safety in general.

To the surprise of no one, least of all me, they’ve opened a 55 gallon drum of whitewash. Here’s what Cup Director John Darby said about reducing horsepower (note, plated engines reportedly produce 400hp):

“We could develop a recipe to build an engine that was 400 horsepower without a restrictor plate but you would still have the same situation that you do. If 400 horsepower is what it takes to keep those cars at the speeds we need to them at, we could put six-cylinders in them at 400 horsepower and you’re going to have the same situation because you’re don’t have enough engine to push the drag of the cars through the air.”

Notice how Darby went way to the extreme rather than offer any other alternative? Like mine. (save your applause ’til the end - ed)

That said NASCAR has used a V6 Configuration. Specifically from 1982 until as late as 1995 the Busch Series used 311ci V6 powerplants. The V6’s didn’t seem to make much difference then, an example is the 1990 Busch Series Goody’s 300 at Daytona. (pole speed that day was 188.945 mph)

That event featured a 13 car pile-up that took out a number of front-runners. Granted, the cars were lighter then, but that’s hardly the point. There’s a common thread here - speed, excessive speed.

Moving on, other notes from the teleconference was stating flatly, no pun intended, lowering banking at both super speedways was out of the question. I have no problem with that, they’re the only two high banked (high speed) tracks, and frankly the two signature tracks of the sport.

And this rather ominous note from Robin Pemberton, VP of Competition related to aggressive driving and blocking:

“A great emphasis may come at Daytona and Talladega because we have tried to let the racers take care of themselves and when certain situations develop a pattern on a more regular basis that’s when we may have to step in and make some calls that we really, we really don’t want them to put us in that position to make the call. We’d rather the competitors take care of it on the track.”

That sounds like hammer time. But we’ve seen that before, and the before included NASCAR’s patented inconsistency in applying it’s hammer.

More video proof, speeds noted are for that events pole:

2007 NBS Talladega (Kyle Busch) 184.299 mph
2003 Cup Talladega (Elliot Sadler) 186.489 mph
2003 Daytona 500 (Ryan Newman) 186.606 mph
1984 Busch Clash (Ricky Rudd) 187.682 mph
1984 Daytona 500 (Richard Petty) 201.848 mph
2002 Aaron’s 312 (Rusty Wallace) 188.764 mph

Take a second to vote in the poll on the main page: What would you do to reduce Talladega Speeds?

Addendum: I hate to sound all PC, but I have to ask, are race cars hurtling into catch fencing the best image to portray in the current social climate?

With sponsorship dollars becoming hard to come by and environmentalists breathing down NASCAR’s neck why give them any more ammunition than they already have? The International Edition of CNN had Edwards’ tumble into the fence as it’s lead story barely an hour of race completion Sunday?

BBC’s Monday edition has a complete slideshow of the entire sequence.

Not a good thing by any measure.