What happened at Talladega last Sunday? May I suggest this Larry King Live interview with Carl Edwards (click here)
Jimmy Spencer blames the yellow line.
Junior and Brad infer that the yellow line is needed.
Jerry Bonkowski blames it on Brad’s aggressive driving.
Cousin Carl doesn’t blame Brad.
Jimmie Johnson wants a new Talladega track.
The fans generally loved the race last Sunday.
A lot of the drivers hated it.
As for solutions, some of those mentioned above, don’t even remotely scratch the surface. Some suggest tweaking the restrictor plates, others says “bag the restrictor plates.” I read one column where somebody suggested the Hanford Device. Heck- we even got a suggestion from a reader here.
Johnny offered up this response to Patrick’s April 28 column. Check this out:
“Take the plate and the spoiler off. Remove the side skirts and raise the height to 8inches at the splitter with no travel. Results:
1. Throttle response
2. Ability to separate
3. Less downforce
4. Braking will be a must
5. Driver talent will be a factor again”
I give the reader props for proposing an idea, rather than just bitching about it. On the other hand, I’ll be the first to tell you I have no idea how viable that is.
One thought keeps coming to mind as we hash out the final lap fiasco that turned Carl Edwards’ car into a frisbee and it rolled across the catch fence like a baseball bat across a wall, injuring 7 spectators- one pretty seriously, in my opinion.
Be careful what you ask for. You may get it.
Let’s not forget that we have restrictor plates at super speedways BECAUSE of an
accident quite similar to that of Carl Edwards. Think for a minute what might have happened had Edwards hit that fence at 225 miles per hour.
An unintended consequence of the restrictor plate is the 500 mile traffic jam of 43 cars that fans love to watch (I’m not generalizing by much, no matter what anyone says), but racers hate to drive.
Dale Earnhardt lamented that plate racing wasn’t “real racin’”, and he hasn’t been the last one to say it. It is a totally different racing dynamic to watch opposing drivers make “draft deals”. I mean- does anyone find it odd to watch Dale Jr. escorting Kyle Busch around the track?
I admit to being seriously bummed that Mark Martin ran so well, for so long at the 2007 Daytona 500, only to get hung out to dry on the final turn due to a lack of a dance partner. It’s no accident that we have all these drivers throughout Talladega history that got their first, or ONLY career win on this crazy track.
With all honesty though, I’ll tell you I’d rather watch what we saw last Sunday, than watch NASCAR turn into “NAPCAR” like it did at Atlanta. The Aaron’s 499 kept us on the edge of our seats, and you didn’t dare get up to go to the fridge because you might miss something.
The race was a rush.
So, I guess I look at all the proposed solutions and see ideas that raise more questions than they provide answers.
NASCAR can mandate smaller engines or somehow limit the speed to 160-170 miles per hour, but do you really want that? I suppose the crashes will be less severe, but we’ll still have lots of crashing, and still have premature endings for guys like Jimmie Johnson who says the racing at Talladega “sucks.”
Now I’m not 100 percent sure I agree, but concerning the yellow line, what about what Junior and Brad said about that yellow line? Cut in the grass? I suppose like Jimmy Spencer says, if drivers wreck enough down there, they’ll stop doing it, but c’mon! No disrespect for a man who raced, but again, there was a day we didn’t have the rule, and we had a problem. The rule changed, now we have a different problem.
Outlaw blocking? Some say blocking is racing, others say blocking is a horrible tactic. I’ll say blocking is a part of what got Edwards wrecked, but blocking didn’t send him airborne into the fence. Getting “helicoptored” by Ryan Newman did that. By the same token, Edwards couldn’t be shocked that he got contact from Keselowski there. He admits he probably would have done the same thing with the roles reversed.
NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter said rules for aggressive driving would be more strictly enforced. Of all the responses, one way or the other, his irked me the most. I try not to be as hard on the NASCAR brass as the curmudgeonly crowd is, but a number of his statements at Monday’s press conference were downright indefensible.
For the sake of perspective, let’s give credit where credit is due. Thanks to safety innovations, Carl Edwards provided a moment of levity with his “run to the finish.” Thank God he wasn’t hurt. The catch fence, though its work wasn’t perfect, kept someone from getting killed. The consequences could have been ten times worse.
Yesterday, we learned the young woman whose jaw was fractured was a teenager attending the race with her dad. I give the man credit for not screaming “laswsuit!” in the press. From what I red into his comments, he’s handled this most unfortunate situation with grace and dignity.
I hope and pray for a speedy recovery for young Blake.
That does bring to mind one idea: Get the damn speakers off that section of fence!
The good news is NASCAR has some time between now and the fall to assess the situation and address it. It’s tempting and easy to call NASCAR’s leadership and the track owners idiots, but if you think about it, they don’t want ANYONE- driver or fan- getting hurt. NOBODY WANTS THAT. Even the most greedy and soulless individual knows the loss of life at a NASCAR event has the potential to effectively end the sport as we know it.
Ryan Newman had some thoughtful insight on the matter of roof flaps. It’s worth examining to keep the car on the ground. I’ve got to think a discussion about fence height is one worth having. Among the plethora of suggestions are ideas that are at least worthy of consideration, but remember this….
Thanks to “no tolerance” laws, a kid can’t bring a plastic knife to school to slice a piece of chicken for lunch. That same kid damn near needs an act of Congress to get a freakin’ aspirin. Think about security measures after 9/11. Bottled water on an airplane? Fuhgeddabouditt!
Don’t get me wrong- though Sunday’s incident was a pretty extreme circumstance, the governing body owes it to everyone present to do everything, sparing no expense to provide as safe a race experience as possible.
By the same token, racing’s risky. I don’t know how many times my aunt (a racing fan from day gone by) has warned about where I sit at the local dirt track. Mind you, a 1/3 mile track with a fence that seems to stretch to the moon is one place I don’t worry about much. I dare say it’s a little credulous to think there isn’t at least some potential for danger.
Doing nothing is not an option. Similarly- scattergunning a bunch of short-sighted notions could be worse.
Beware of the law of unintended conesequences.
PHOTO CREDITS- Top photo courtesy of Getty Images. Edwards car flip and the Talladega race photo by Walter G. Arce. More of his work may be found at flickr.com, or click on the hyperlink.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Take out what happened with Edwards on the final lap, and I am pretty sure we won’t be having this discussion. In a week or two, it will go away when something else happens. The media will bring it up again at Daytona, and it will die out again. Then, the media will bring it up once more at Talladega, and then the championship at Homestead Miami will drown it out when the media talks about how Homestead doesn’t embrace the series enough during the championship weekend and that we should move it somewhere else. Then NASCAR will release and statement saying that Homestead is great. Then, (prediction time), they will announce a couple of weeks later that the season finale will be moved somewhere else. Then, NASCAR will raise the track fence at Talladega and Daytona up 4 feet, and the issue will officially be dead.
I just hate it that this is drowning out Keselowski’s first win.
You asked for somebody’s 2 cents? You got it. Adjusted for inflation. Got change for a $20?
Facts first:
“The Incident”: Kes held his line, above the yellow, & had a fender under Carl. Carl’s spotter couldn’t tell him “Inside” fast enough, Carl tried to block (uninformed & too late). “It” happens. Just racing at Talladega. Kes was right.
“Safety of the cars”: These cars are safe, except for the tires. Goodyear has a lot of work to do. The splitter does it’s job, & does it well. The wing does it’s job also. As far as it becoming a lifting device when it’s turned backwards? False. There is still more pressure above the wing than below, therefore, depending on the angle, it still produces downforce. Turn it UPSIDE DOWN, however….. I could get into Bernoulli’s principal here, but I’m only an amateur aerodynamic engineer.
The cars are actually lifted by the air under the rear bumper. Not because of the wing. What the cars need is larger roof & cowl flaps because it’s a larger car. They could also benefit from a rear air dam below the bumper (what the street racers call a ‘diffuser’). This would help keep the air from getting under the rear of the car in case of a spin. Next: side skirts, or ‘ground effects’ to keep the air from getting under the sides of the car. Let the fans gripe about the appearance, & how they’re not “stock” cars anymore. Hell, they haven’t been close to stock since the 80’s.
My opinion? Lose the plates & reduce the compression in the engines. Maybe drop the cubes to about 300 or so. This will kill the horsepower & top speed without robbing the cars of throttle response the way the plates do. Aerodynamically, there is no real way to keep these cars (or any others) glued to the track at those speeds, so, on tracks like Daytona or Talladega, the only real solution is to slow them down. They tried adding drag, it didn’t work. Yes, it’ll cost the owners more to build 2 different engines, but the only other choice is what we have. Even trashing the aerodynamics won’t work. They’ve tried it. Fences on the spoilers, fences on the roofs, etc. Nada. Anything will take to the air with enough velocity behind it.
Yes, so far we’ve only had a few incidents of flying stockcars in the past 20 years, but from a safety standpoint, that’s a few too many. They cited Allison’s crash from ‘89 as the motivation behind the plates, but there have been other instances at Talladega. I don’t recall the years, but they were post-restrictor plate. Ask Rusty, or Bill Elliott. They’ve both went flying without pilots’ licenses.
Excellent post. I have my gripes with Dega but there is nothing that could be done or will be done in the near future to change what happened, it was really a fluke.
I agree with the idea of a smaller engine with less horsepower for Daytona and Talladega. The purpose of the plate is to lower horsepower thus lowering speed. It seems that the horsepower could be limited by a smaller engine without losing the throttle response like the plate. Hopefully this would also spread out the cars a little bit. I do have one other thought. Why are most people blaming this on Carl Edwards? The same “experts” were blaming Dale Jr. at Daytona. He did the same thing Brad K. did and he was a “bad guy”. Now Carl is the bad guy for “blocking” but he did not run halfway down the track like Vicars did. It seems that we have some hypocrits out there on this subject. Not you Jim. Just what I have observed.
I agree with the smaller engine. Also take away the out of bounds. There is going to be big wrecks there no matter what you do. As long as we keep the cars and parts away from the fans, that is what matters.