Thanks Jack Roush, I Needed a Good Topic
One can always count on Roush-Fenway Racing’s co-owner to provide interesting quotes to ponder.
People are still muttering about his WW 2 analogy when Toyota officially announced their move into NEXTEL Cup. Jack at the time as much as declared war on the Camry’s. Little did he know at the time he was bringing an empty bandoleer to the fight as evidenced by the lack of many Fords in the Top Twelve. But that’s a topic for another (dare I say rainy) day.
On Jack’s menu today is the CORN and the financial aspects of it.
He readily admits, and I agree to a certain extent, teams will need less cars when their fleets consist entirely of The Model CORN. “The Car of Tomorrow, I think, will have a result in the reduction of the number of cars that are required to run a program,” Roush said.
Here’s my “lesser extent.” One prime objective of the CORN was to limit the “special cars,” one for a road course, one for short tracks, one for superspeedways and so on.
Recall the penalties handed out after the road course event at Infineon, a very low intensity track aerodynamically as compared to an oval.
Recall also Knaus & Johnson, along with Letarte & Gordon, all said they brought new cars to Infineon and the penalties were the result of massaging areas of the front fenders to gain aerodynamically.
The obvious question is why Infineon when so little can be gained? To me, and I have no definitive proof only suspicions, the answer is a test of building a “special version” of the CORN. The future will tell if I’m correct, maybe, the penalties may have put the ka-bosch on any thoughts by those teams and others.
But on to Jack and more of his thoughts, in the long run he doesn’t believe the CORN will result in any net savings:
“I absolutely feel that there will not be a net save to the teams based on the amount of money that goes into the cars to get the chassis the way that NASCAR wants it for its inspection; then, past the initial inspection, the amount of sheet metal that has to be replaced to fix a relatively small problem.”
Those little bump and run maneuvers that cause slight damage will end up draining wallets:
“… because when you get the kind of shot into the body that causes a snout to bend, you almost always have some amount of distress that is put into the rest of the car.“And, when we had reasonably wide-open, or relatively wide-open tolerances, you were able to let the tolerance be taken out by the effects of the crash. You can’t do that now.”
Now think about that contraption they lower over the CORN during inspection. It holds the car body tighter than a Victorian corset.
Well actually you can “get it back to original” but it takes cold hard cash:
The amount of precision that’s required to get the sheet metal in order to pass the tech line is unprecedented in terms of what we’ve had (in the past),” he added. “For the time being, we anticipate at least a 70 percent to an 80 percent increase in labor that’s required to keep these cars ready to go from one race to the next.”
Sum bitch, where have I heard something similar before? (pay no attention to the self initiated horn blowing)
Hmmm… Roush-Fenway? Why do I see some sense behind that marriage now? Not to mention all the other NASCAR team “nuptials” that have occurred this year. With more to follow.
As with my own “special CORN car” conspiracy theory noted above only time will tell if Jack is right. But Jack hasn’t gotten where he’s at by being wrong very many times. (And besides, he’s in agreement with me.)
Jack Roush, Roush-Fenway Racing, Sports, NASCAR, NEXTEL Cup, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle
Um… yeah. Most of the owners have said something similar as well. Maybe in less words, but there were there. Evernham and his laser cutting robots? Probably cost a small fortune to implement, but might help them “break even” in the labor department in the long run.
But, Jack has a point. He usually does anyway, even if you don’t like it.
Even if there is a savings in one area, that doesn’t mean those resources disappear. They are simply re-appropriated to another area.
Where it does have potential though, is for smaller teams where they don’t have to have a car for damn near every track out there. But, we’ll see how it goes. I don’t believe that sometime down the road, as both NASCAR and the teams get more familiar with the car, that there won’t be a few modifications to the system. Someone will pitch a fit enough that those deaf ears finally hear the cries.
I thought about adding Rays laser robots but the post was already too long. I’d also note ray said at the time resources would be “re-appropriated” from construction to other areas so in that sense he wasn’t saving any cash.
And those laser parts will also, I suspect, be sold down the food chain.