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Safer Racing Now Considered As Boring Racing

An Opinion



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April 26, 2012

By Jim Fitzgerald

Jim Fitzgerald

Up In The Marbles…After STP 400


The Face Of NASCAR

I’m going to take a little break from my usual multi-topic format this week to write about our sport, and the ever-evolving body of work that it is.

It is changing. It has changed.

Back in the day, as the youngsters are so fond of saying, NASCAR races were a lot different than they are today. There were many that were shorter in distance, though today the races may have a shorter distance than they had back then. There were also a lot fewer teams with a legitimate shot to win, and we had more than six short track events per year.

Let us use the 1965 Southern 500 at Darlington, South Carolina as a point to ponder.

  • Buren Skeen, with less than ten starts to his credit in the then-Grand National Series, lost his life in the early laps of the race when his car was hit in the driver’s side door by two other cars as it spun. The impact nearly bent Skeen’s car in half.

  • Cale Yarborough attempted to make a pass for the lead at one point and ended up rolling his car a handful of times after going over the guardrail.

  • With just under fifty laps to go, Fred Lorenzen and Darel Dieringer were racing for the lead when both cars experienced mechanical issues within laps of each other. Lorenzen’s was terminal, but Dieringer managed to bring his troubled ride home in third place, nineteen laps down. Nineteen laps down, in third place.

    Who won the race? Gentleman Ned Jarrett, and he won by fourteen laps over Buck Baker.

Let’s recap that.

With forty-four laps to go, Lorenzen’s car quits. In the next forty-four laps, Dieringer not only lost the lead, but he lost nineteen additional laps to the eventual winner. That equates to getting passed by the leader about roughly, every two laps. There were also fifteen cars running at the end of that race, which had twenty-three lead changes, seven cautions for forty-four laps, and took just short of four and one-half hours to complete.

So, how has our sport changed since then? Looking at the bullet points above:

  • Unfortunately, a competitor lost his life during the course of the event. The event continued, and four hours later, was complete. In today’s NASCAR, the race would have probably been suspended for a period of time, perhaps even called complete.

  • Cale Yarborough went over the guardrail. We don’t have guardrails anymore. We have SAFER barriers and catch fences that will (hopefully) keep all vehicles inside the track.

    I feel like the last time a car actually left the track (on an oval) may have been a race at Talledega (1993?) when Jimmy Horton flew over the fence coming out of turn two and down the back stretch. Horton, despite the aerial act, was okay.

    Stanley Smith, in the same accident, appeared to hit the wall as others have done so many times and walked away from a heap of twisted metal. However, Smith had hit the wall head on and suffered a basilar skull fracture, and unfortunately would never race again.

    One can only image if the cars of Carl Edwards or Neil Bonnett had not been held in by the front stretch catch fence at Talladega when they went airborne.

  • Could you imagine the outcry from the “Racing is Boring” (I’ll call them “RIBs”) fans if we had a race where the soon to be crowned winner ran around alone to finish an eventual fourteen laps ahead of second place, while passing the would-be third place car every two laps?

    What would happen if we had fifteen cars running at the end of a race? There would be radio callers and letter writers asking for the cars to be rebuilt, the track to be torn up, the scoring to be investigated, the drivers tested, the pit road speed to be increased to 95 miles per hour, and mandatory red bull shots at each pit stop.

People use races like the 1965 Southern 500 to determine the excitement level of today’s racing. They use races like Bristol in 2003, a race which had 20 caution flag periods. You could make an argument that most Bristol races could be used as a gauge for the excitement level, if excitement means cautions.

In 1971, however, Charlie Glotzbach won a 500 lap race there with zero caution flags. Must have been a snoozer, right? Glotzbach led more than 400 of the 500 laps run that day, and finished the race three laps ahead of second place finisher Bobby Allison.

Glotzbach didn’t do it all himself, though. Raymond Hassler, nicknamed “Friday”, would spell Glotzbach in the race three times due to the extreme heat and humidity. (Back then, the race was run in July.) In an article from NASCAR.com in 2001 by Tim Packman, Glotzbach was quoted as saying that “because we didn’t have any cautions, the race went by quickly. The cars had bigger motors back then and we, as drivers, were better drivers than they are today, so there weren’t as many wrecks back then.”

One thing to remember, however, beyond Glotzbach’s supreme driving talent, is that over the past few years, something interesting has happened. While NASCAR, Goodyear, the tracks, and technology have made our racing safer, they have also made the sport safer. Yes, I know that doesn’t really make much sense, but follow me on this for a second.

NASCAR has mandated a safer race car so that in the case of an impact with the wall or another car (or a jet dryer), the driver would be more protected. In the construction of that safer car, the physical characteristics of the car itself have changed, and it now has a better balance. Thus, the chances of recovering from what would be a sure spin and eventually unfavorable results are now higher.

Goodyear does not have a competitor in the series now, and has not for quite some time. Back in the early to mid 1990’s, there was Hoosier, and the battle for intergalactic tire supremacy went on for a few years, with each tire manufacturer sacrificing safety for speed.

Now Goodyear is making a better, stronger, safer tire, with better grip and fewer blowouts. The tracks are repaving more frequently, or adding a sealer, or filling the cracks and seams, which makes for a safer racing surface. There are also more paved runoff areas so a car can recover and keep going, instead of hitting a grassy area, losing control, possibly spinning, hitting an inside wall, or digging in and barrel-rolling down the back stretch like Rusty Wallace in the 1993 Daytona 500.

So, while all of these advancements have been made to make the sport safer for a driver in the event of a spin or impact, it has now become safer to be the car itself. Less impact.

Let us throw another shoe into the stew. The great championship battle that we had in 2011 showed the teams, drivers, owners and the fans something very interesting: Every point counts.

In the 2011 Sprint Cup Championship battle, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards, after the final lap of the final race, were tied in points. It was Tony Stewart taking the crown, however, based on the fact that he had won more races during the season than Edwards. With those results in their hip pockets, everyone involved in the sport is doing everything they can to grab every possible point available. (See: David Reutimann)

There are so many scenarios that change the outcome of last years’ point battle. One lap led somewhere that a lap was not led. One more position on the race track somewhere. Another win during the regular season.

Knowing this now, and how tight a Championship battle may be coming down to the end of this season, may have everyone a little cautious. “Boys Have At It” may be all good to NASCAR, but the drivers may be tiptoeing a little bit right now in the first quarter of the season in order to position themselves better in the points.

All of this, thrown together, stirred, simmered and covered for thirty minutes while you cook the green beans may be the right recipe for a thinking man’s sport of strategy instead of a white-knuckled hair on fire recipe for tragedy.

I am a different fan than you, just as you are a different fan from that guy, who is a different fan than the woman next to him. Everyone has their own memories and their own definition of exciting. Experiences strike chords, and people are going to use whatever the most vivid memory they have as a basis of comparison for what they are enduring now.

For all of you RIBs that already have, or are close to turning your back on the sport, I urge you to not give up on it. I used to love Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Bullets flying, saw blades used as weapons, explosions every seventeen seconds, yeah, that was me. However, things change, and I’ll take a nice suspense film or a comedy on movie night and save my thirst for excitement for Sunday.

If your children think NASCAR is boring now, they may certainly change their thinking as they get older, and wiser. You may think our sport has changed, and it has, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Hang on, keep watching, and get your popcorn ready.

That is all for me this week. Short track racing at its finest coming up at Richmond, and I’ll give you my thoughts on it next week!

“Life is based less than you think on what you’ve learned, and much more than you think on what you have inside you right from the beginning”

Remember to follow me on Twitter: @forewasabi




You can contact Jim at.. Insider Racing News



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.




You Can Read Other Articles By Jim Fitzgerald

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