There is an article in today’s New York Times that NASCAR suspects it has swung too far to the side of safety. After a number of horrid deaths, they instituted rules to prevent crashes. But with the new high-tech Car of Tomorrow, crashes are now much more survivable, so they are encouraging drivers to be more aggressive.
More side-by-side racing, more contact between bumpers, that sort of thing.
I bet we can come up with better ways to making NASCAR more exciting.
Return of the figure-8 track.
Random fans driving on the track to provide a more real-world experience.
Those Ben-Hur chariot hub caps with knives.
Land mines.
Take down the fences and let the fans (for a premium, of course) stand next to the track.
It remains to be seen how the looser officiating will play out in practice. I don’t have anything against, say, bump-drafting, but catch fences were all that kept a couple of cars from being launched into the stands last year. I think turning a blind eye to drivers blatantly dumping one another on the track, as seems implied by the new rules interpretations, is likely to backfire, and badly.
NASCAR officials seem to be a bit like too-permissive parents. They let things go until something goes too far wrong, then they clamp down. So things will swing toward the “more interesting” that they say they want, until somebody gets hurt, or until there are so many crashes that they can’t run a race. Too many laps under a yellow flag and they’ll swing back the other way.
But then, the drivers would have to learn to turn <gasp> right, too! You’d have to train up a whole new generation of drivers; there’s no way the current ones would ever be able to handle that.
You want to spice it up? Let’s actually follow through on an intriguing rumor that’s circulating through automotive circles right now and get back toward stock.
The story is that Ford (with support from GM) is threatening to pull out if NASCAR doesn’t start making the rules more relevant to road-going cars, so by 2011 or 2012, we’d have fuel injection, sequential-shift gearboxes and silhouette bodywork on the cars, possibly as Mustangs, Camaros, Challengers and whatever Toyota can assemble from the Island of Misfit Cars.
Beyond doing that, I’d like to see them add Road America to the Cup schedule, move the Southern 500 back to Darlington on Labor Day weekend, drop one race each at California, Pocono and New Hampshire and take about 250 pounds out of the right side of the cars.
Unless my silly brain missed it, surprised there’s been no discussion of the pothole problem at Daytona today. Good thing they’re planning to resurface it soon (they really should drop the banking to 24 degrees while they’re at it).
I wish they’d go back to the days when there weren’t rigid equipment standards. In other words, whoever could come up with the best equipment “trick” to get more speed, etc. My grandpa used to drive a LONG time ago and he used to say that was half the fun…seeing what the other teams came up with to beat everyone else!
Fuel injection is currently being tested and could be put in use by the end of the year, next year at the latest. This applies to all 3 of the national series.
Sequential gearboxes are extremely expensive. They are not needed anyway. They would be a waste on ovals and the Jerico trannys used on road courses can be shifted without the clutch. This is as close to sequential as they need to go.
The Nationwide series will be using Mustangs and Challengers in the near future. Chevy is sticking with the Impala this year but will use the Camaro in 2011. Toyota is reportedly going to use the Solara.
Tune into ESPN2 on June 19, the Nationwide series will be at Road America. The response to this could bode well for the future of Cup racing at the track.
Robert Yates spent 10 years arguing for fuel injection to no avail, and that was years ago. They’ve resisted fuel injection for so long because they’re worried about traction control, and that’s why I suspect this attempt will be stalled out a couple more years (unless they do the smart thing and impose a common ECU they can hand out like restrictor plates.) Personally, I think the best option is to borrow the Grand-Am engine specs and get stock blocks back under the hoods. Dodge wouldn’t have one already homologated, but Penske could call Ilmor and have a Hemi submitted to NASCAR within three months (if he didn’t go Toyota.)
I don’t see a real need for sequential-shift gearboxes either, but I can see the manufacturers arguing for them as being more relevant to road-going technology.
I don’t think putting the Busch cars at Road America necessarily means the Cup guys are headed to Wisconsin any time soon. We still haven’t seen them take Cup to Montreal or Mexico City, and with the Milwaukee Mile off the Busch schedule they needed a race in the area to fill that hole. Sure, RA is a great track, but it’s going to be a 2+ minute lap around there and NASCAR’s dislike of local yellows on road courses is going to cause problems with the number of guys in Busch who aren’t even talented enough to spin themselves out cleanly.
