April 20, 2010
By Allen Madding
During the 1970s, The NASCAR Winston Cup inspection process was not quite up to par with what it is today in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Observing that the inspectors of the day weighed the cars before the race but not after, Darrell Waltrip’s crew members devised ways to make the car meet minimum weight requirements before the race but lighter during the race. At the time, when cars were rolled across NASCAR’s scales, teams were allowed to have the radio in the car, the driver’s helmet, and even a roll of duct tape. So, Waltrip’s team created a lead radio, a led weight fashioned to look like a roll of duct tape, and even a lead water bottle. After inspection, the crew members would swap these creations for the real thing, effectively shaving 150 lbs off of the total car weight.
The DiGard team headed up by Buddy Parrot and Gary Nelson, who was director of competition for NASCAR until recently, filled a section of the roll cage in Waltrip’s car with lead bird shot. They built a trap door in the floor just beneath the tube. During the race, Waltrip simply opened the trap door and the led poured out.
In 1995, Ray Evernham and Jeff Gordon were caught using aluminum wheel hubs as opposed to the steel hubs required by the NASCAR rulebook which significantly reduced the reciprocating weight on the No. 24 Dupont car.
Rumor has long spread around the garage about competitors getting an all aluminum bodied car through inspection without NASCAR officials detecting the body not being built of steel as required which would allow a team to mount ballast lower on the frame to offset the lighter body reducing the center of gravity height of the car and improving the car’s cornering speed.
Since the NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series began utilizing the current chassis, many teams have worked feverishly to achieve a better chassis balance and many of the teams have found many different ways to go about achieving that balance including lowering the center of gravity. Anything that gets weight lower than the ballast mounts on the chassis will produce a lower center of gravity and faster cornering speed which equates to better lap times.
Apparently, two teams discovered that additional weight under the radiator pan, the aluminum duct work directing air from the nose of the car through the radiator, would improve the balance of the car. So, the teams’ fabricators built a lower radiator pan for their cars that weighed significantly more than the original aluminum pans – like 20-40lbs more than the aluminum counterparts.
Following qualifying Friday, NASCAR Sprint Cup officials confiscated the lower radiator pan from the No. 13 GEICO Toyota of Max Papis, it weighed 45.2lbs. They also confiscated the lower radiator pan from the No. 47 Tom Thumb/Viva Toyota of Marcos Ambros which weighed 25.7lbs.
Many believed that NASCAR has completely eradicated cheating in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series by introducing the latest generation car and the significantly increased number of rules surrounding the new car. But never underestimate the creativity of fabricators charged with producing winning race cars and finding solutions to balance a chassis that does not perform as well as previous generations.
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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