THE Change That Never Happened 11/4/2014 |
I bid
you welcome gentle readers, and a warm and cozy
welcome as well to our assigned reader of all things NASCAR. Pull up a seat and
make yourself comfortable. We're edging ever closer to the off-season, when
there will be less and less for you to do, so you might as well enjoy being
busy while you can. Heaven knows, I do my best to keep you occupied!
In his
last article, my partner Jim Fitzgerald wrote
of "Change",
and mentioned some, such as the disaster that was the COT, that didn't work out
so well for NASCAR. The dirty little secret that no one will tell you is that
it could have, and indeed it should have not only worked out but been a huge
success. You see, when first conceived, the COT was the brainchild of Gary
Nelson, that crew chief extraordinaire from days of yore that was so good at
getting away with murder, NASCAR hired him for the position of "Top
Cop" as I like to refer to the Director of Competition, replacing the
retiring Dick Beaty. "In order to catch a
thief... "
Gary
knew race cars, inside and out, perhaps better than anyone else on the planet,
save for perhaps Ray Evernham. There are
mechanics; there are crew chiefs, and then there are geniuses. Those two men,
along with the late, great Smokey Yunick, are the only ones in memory that this
scribe would place in that last category, and my esteem for each of those men
rises to somewhere beyond the moon. Each was a master at his craft... each in a
slightly different era.
When
Smokey ran into that brick wall named Big Bill France, he realized immediately
that one could not win an argument in or about NASCAR, as it belonged solely to
the man with whom he was arguing, so he did the wise thing; he left... and
never turned another wrench for a NASCAR team. Bill's loss was IndyCar's gain. Bill knew it, but being every bit as
stubborn as Smokey, he let him stay gone. Smokey still came to the NASCAR races
though... I've always thought just to annoy Bill and
Bill Jr., and he continued to comment on them almost to the day he left us,
back in May of 2001.
On
“cheating”, which he was so often accused of himself, he offered this opinion
on the other two gentlemen in our current conversation... "They will find out there is no way to police creativity. No way
in hell! There's always some guy who comes along like Ray Evernham that's
smarter than the average cat, and he's going to figure out a way to get around
it. The difference between Gary Nelson's ability to think and Ray Evernham's - well, probably there's not a lot of difference
in their IQs, but Evernham concentrates on engines and certain areas with a lot
of expensive, very educated help. For 60 hours a week, he's studying new stuff
to beat the rules. Gary Nelson is spending 50 hours a week trying to enforce
the rules that were made yesterday. They're not even in the same game."
Returning
our attention now back to the COT, the original plan was to design a better,
and most importantly a safer environment inside the car to prevent injuries to
the drivers. Gary Nelson had been promoted by that time from Top Cop to a more impressive
sounding title in research and technology, working either with or directly
under Steve Peterson, NASCAR's Technical Director. Gary had great plans for the
Car of Tomorrow... plans that included destroying the nearly aero-perfect design
that though increasing the speed of the cars, was also
killing their ability to pass. If you look back, the terms, "clean
air" and "aero-push" were here before the COT was off the
drawing board. It didn't create them, though it did accentuate them. What a
shame, because it could have rendered those words obsolete.
Gary
understood that, and as long as they were making radical changes to the
racecar, he figured, "Why not take care of all the problems, and answer
all the questions with this single redesign?" Various parts of the COT
were reconfigured to promote absorption of energy in the event of a crash. The
"greenhouse" space (The area within the car that houses the driver)
was enlarged, an optional escape hatch through the roof was incorporated into
the design and a better insulated and safer fuel cell was added. Custom
contoured seats would now envelop the driver, who would be restrained with a
7-point harness and a HANS device. As testing progressed, tethers were added to
some parts of the car, and more would be added later as found necessary.
Finally, with improvement to the inside of the car completed, it was time to
address the outer contour of the COT, and then, as they say... the fun began.
Being of
the honest sort, Gary announced that he felt his exterior design would square
off the lines of the COT sufficiently to slow it to the point where restrictor
plates would no longer be necessary at Daytona and Talladega. In short, having
always hated restrictor plate racing, he intended to kill two birds with one
COT. Oops! Delete button pushed; tongue tripped over, and I'm fairly certain
that the door must have hit him in the posterior on his way out of it. Eventually,
we all saw the arrival of a car for which NASCAR credited Brett Bodine, and
considering the outcome, I'm sure Gary was more than happy to let that notion
prevail. There's an old saying that I
believe is appropriate here; "A
camel is a horse, designed by a committee." Any
questions?
Well,
I'd give it points for ugly, but somehow that squat little bundle that a friend
once described to me as resembling nothing more than a pregnant roller skate,
was still fast. NASCAR likes fast. They like to hear Darrell Waltrip and Larry
McReynolds pretend to be Tom Carnegie as they drawl, "And... it's a N-E-W... T-R-A-C-K... R-E-C-O-R-D! At least, NASCAR used
to like fast. Then came that rash of repaving that
brought racing at several tracks not only up to but over that magical 200 mph
number that insurance companies say must not be crossed.
So, here
we sit at yet another crossroads gentle readers. The
cars are now deemed "Too fast." NASCAR has to slow them down, and
exactly how do they propose to accomplish that feat? Why, the way they've
always done it... with technology that was state of the art in 1971... restrictor plates. Oh yes, they now call them "tapered
spacers" and we, the fans, are far too ignorant to know that is the same
thing. I did show you a tapered spacer a while back, but in case you missed it
then, here is a tapered spacer. Look familiar?
So...
please allow me to quickly recap... the COT came and went... the latter by fan
and factory demand... the manufacturers didn't care for the fact that it in no
way resembled any of their products and at least one of them threatened to pull
out entirely if their brand appearance did not markedly improve. While the COT was under construction, we
could have followed Gary's advice and taken care of the excess speed problem
AND eliminated the aero push while losing those dang plates at the big tracks. When
the COT was being redesigned to debut as the "Gen-6", another chance
presented itself to get it right. We could have had the best of all possible
worlds, but NASCAR said no.
Who's to
blame? Well, Steve Peterson passed away in 2008 at a very young age. RIP Steve;
you were a great guy. Gary Nelson, last I saw him, was the acting crew chief on
one of the Grand-American cars in the GT division, and Brett Bodine, for all
his supposed brilliance, is still driving the pace car. In truth, I have no
idea exactly whose idea the tapered spacer was, but I do know exactly where the
buck stops in NASCAR. We could have had it all. Instead, we have a bigger mess
than we started with and we're still back-pedaling. This time, it's not change
that's to blame. There was plenty of it, but the one change that might have
really mattered was the one not made... the road not taken... and that has made
all the difference.
At the
end of his article, Jim asked, "Do you trust Brian?" My answer is a
resounding NO! Not just no but HELL NO!
Now it's
time for our Classic Country Closeout. I'll try to control myself today and
keep it short. Someone around here seemed a bit testy when he thought maybe I
went a bit overboard last time.
Let's
have some giggles today. All of Country Music is not about trucks, trains and
Mama, no matter what you've heard. Red Sovine was a
well-known singer of sad songs and tearful tales, but Red liked to have fun
too. Please have a laugh on Red as he offers one called "My Little
Rat", sometimes called "The Intoxicated Rat.
Here's
one from Walter Brennan, and I swear, every time I listen to this one, I hear
not Walter Brennan, but Junior Johnson. With that in mind... here's Walter with
"Back to the Farm."
Lastly,
we have one from my teen years, done here by Ernest Tubb, Red Foley and Minnie
Pearl. Please enjoy and smile all the way through "The Love Bug
Itch!"
Be well
gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
~
PattyKay