Another wild finish today, as Newman goes airborne and Martin rolls coming out of the final turn. The last race, of course, finished with Edwards' car almost going into the crowd.
At Talladega, NASCAR has mandated restrictor plates, made going beneath the 'yellow line' illegal, more or less banned bump-drafting, driven down the allowable gear, and given them all an "equal" car. All of this to attempt to slow the cars down to make the sport "safer".
My question is, has slowing the cars down really made it any safer? I think they need to focus more on spreading the field out, rather than doing things that will keep them packed in a group. Maybe removing some of the aerodynamic advantages to make HP more important again?
The one thing that they started doing a few years ago, and then stopped with the decision to go to these new cars, was dropping the compression ratios on these engines. That would lower the horsepower, but allow the teams to build them as needed, thus opening up the field a little bit. With these restrictor plates, all the engines put out basically the same horsepower and with the air starvation they can't accelerate fast enough to spread the field out. The lower compression ratios would increase engine reliability and gas mileage as well. I have no idea why they stopped doing it, there was a plan in place, but it seems to have been forgotten.
that would be like a fish story.."the big one got away".
the 'big one' stays no matter what anyone in management implements.
2 cents.
your mileage may vary.
good topic tho.. how about a lottery that has certain cars mandatory pitting on certain laps, say like 2-4 laps apart from the others..but is that racing?
Allez en avant et la foi vous viendra.
breaking the laws of physics,
becoming a blur, tip-toeing on the edge,
finding eureka moments...
The simple fact is that most fans love this style of racing, and only are upset after the race because Dale Jr didn't win and two cars flipped (one a somewhat fan favorite and the other took a while to get him out after being stuck upside down with the roll cage jammed against his helmet).
It is natural for everyone to love that element of danger and crave it.
What is the fix? It is more a people fix: people have to get right with the consequences of what they love so much. They have to be able to handle it if it gets out of control. Once they get right with that, it is all good.
Jason Stix Buckley
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I thought it was the most boring race I have ever watched. Truck race was really good, Kyle made sure of that. This was a bunch of drivers afraid to race because of Nascar. Boring, hate restrictor plate racing.
Knock the banking down. Put bias ply tires on the cars. Take the wing off of the car. Raise the cars up 2 inches. There are alot of ways to fix this. The restrictor plates are a joke. You could slow them down to 100 mph, but if they all are bunched up, they are still going to crash. Racing is about the FASTEST car winning. But until they get Talladega and Daytona to a point where the driver has to use the brakes in the corners and DRIVE the car, it will always be this way. I don't recall which driver said it yesterday, but he asked about putting a cruise control on his car. It is absolutely that boring.
Like him or not, Ryan Newman could have been killed. What if the car had caught fire? Alot of other people could have been hurt. Yes, racing is dangerous. The drivers all know that when they climb into the cars. Yes, there are those "fans" that want to see wrecks. That is what Demolition derbies and Figure 8 races are for. Would those same "fans" that love to see wrecks have been happier yesterday had someone been killed? A real race fan wants to see a real race, where the best and fastest wins.
Hopefully it won't take a death for this all to change...
and jr said this..(this guy amuses me all the time)..
"After a race that saw two cars flip in the final six laps, Earnhardt Jr. suggested that NASCAR is doing the opposite of what it should be doing to the cars at restrictor-plate tracks.
"If they have to slow us down and run around these tracks at slower speeds, they have to make a smaller motor, make us run a smaller motor, but be able to open it up so there is throttle response,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Then slow the cars down with a little more drag or something. Them old cars in the '80s didn't cut the wind like these things do.
“We have got them in [the] ground and everything else aero-wise to make it smooth and sleek, and now we are having to trim the motors back to make the cars slower. It is probably the opposite of what needs to be going on. Probably need to open the motors back up and slow the cars down with the air.”
Earnhardt Jr. said Sunday’s race was typical of Talladega events of late: Relatively calm racing until the closing laps.
“The race is pretty safe up until the end,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “You knew that. I don't think anybody wants to be out there and involved in what happens at the end: Dodging cars, seeing people flip upside down. Obviously there is something else that needs to be thought about. I am sure NASCAR will figure it out. They are pretty hard-headed over there, don't like to admit they [are] wrong sometimes."
yeap, that's it. but we all said that years ago
Allez en avant et la foi vous viendra.
breaking the laws of physics,
becoming a blur, tip-toeing on the edge,
finding eureka moments...
For once, I have to agree with Jr. It's not necessarily the track that needs to be looked at, it's these cars. Maybe NASCAR needs to get off their high horse and look at the cars/trucks in their lower divisions or other sanctioning bodies and the ways they slow them down at tracks like Talladega. I know the cars are quite different from the COT, but I thought that the Truck Series and ARCA races at Talladega were some of the best races I've seen all year! Like Jr. said slow the cars down with the air!
I think it's going to be tough though. Even if you un-restrict the motors just a little bit you run the risk of having wrecks like Bodine's in the Truck Series in 2000. Slowing the cars even more won't solve all of the problems. Their were several occurrences of the slower Dash Series cars flipping in the late 1990's at Daytona even with roof flaps (although those cars were lighter).
NASCAR really needs to look into the engineering of something in addition to the roof flaps so these cars stay on the ground. It appears that the roof flaps are not constructed to or don't do the job when the car spins to the right (Mark Martin's wreck) or backwards (Ryan Newman's wreck).
Hopefully something can be done about that because Newman's wreck was scary and in my opinion him, Harvick, and NASCAR were lucky. If Harvick wasn't there, Newman's car might have fallen flat on it's roof possibly seriously or fatally injuring him. And what if Harvick was a little further ahead and Newman's car flipped on top of Harvick's roof rather than his hood? Very dangerous situation!
I think part of the problem was the wing itself. Look how it's designed, looks to me like it would create lift when the car is backwards. Much like what we saw with Ryan.
This will sound radical,but it's time to concede that a 2.66 mile race track is just too long for the modern stock car. I would suggest building new bankings at a lower degree inside the existing bankings (leave them for historical purposes), which would drop the over lentgh of the track to 2.25 or 2.125. If this was done right, Talledega is still plenty wide enough to take the plates off and go racing.
For comparison, only a few of the "old" F-1 circuits have races today. Monza abandoned the oval/road combination in the 1960's, and the road circuit has been altered over the years with chicanes or other changes to allow the modern F-1 car to race there. Spa is only half what it originally was, but faced with the loss of a race if the changes were not made, the fans have supported the alterations to keep the races.
If the track at Talledega was done right, the fans would support it as much as they do now.
ISC and Nascar are playing with the future of the sport. No fence can be built high enough to 100 percent guareentee it will stop a car once it is airborne. No one can say a car won't go over the fence and kill a lot of people.
Once they are off the ground it's a whole new ball game. The changes to the fence at Talledega did nothing to keep the cars on the ground, which was the problem to start with.
If Talledega was a Speedway Motorsports track, I bet Nascar would tell them to change the track or loose the race dates, IMHO.
Edited by Gary66 on 11-05-09 08:40 PM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
Gary you have lost your mind. Leave 'Dega alone fix the cars, they are the problem. The track is not the problem. They should stop trying to make the COT the new IROC car. Thats what they have done IMO. They should make the cars more boxed or more radical do what Kimmel does in his street stock races and put a big hunk of metal on the roof to hold down the speeds and let the drivers do their thing.
