Race Car Stuff

I just watched the finish of the Daytona 500 and the long winter (AKA off season) is officially over for most forms of racing. Granted it is not in full swing yet, but speed weeks means that the car shows for the local short tracks will be seen at local shopping malls soon, the earliest autocrosses can be seen and we will hear the sounds of race engines being tested in local racers garages and driveways. The full swing of the racing season is just around the corner.

For most racers and race fans alike this has been a tough off season. The economy has caused many businesses to re-evaluate their marketing plans, leaving tighter budgets and often axing the racing sponsorships at all levels. We have read about layoffs totaling about a thousand employees in the NASCAR shops around Charlotte, NC. Similar things have happened at all other levels of racing all around the country and probably the world. NASCAR had responded with a ban on testing intended to save the teams money. Some other sanctioning bodies had done the same or similar measures to save the participants money. This all meant that for the fans it was going to be a long and anxious winter with no testing to watch and speculate what it would all bring for the 2009 racing season.

The opening of Daytona Speed Weeks began with the Rolex 24 and Koni Challenge cars. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief with 63 Koni Challenge cars taking the green flag. Most were adorned with the usual sponsor logos, but there were a few more cars with empty fenders than usual, but this surely would not make the racing any worse. I thought the battle between the Mustangs, Porsches and BMW’s was truly classic. It was reminiscent of early days of Trans Am races with the close racing with some truly great driving. I was only slightly disapointed that the Turner BMW of Auberlin and Bell barely beat the Roush prepared Mustang of Plumb and Roush.

In the Rolex 24, I am somewhat disappointed in the fact that caution flags are comming out as often as they do in NASCAR races. It is road racing, if a car is off the course and not blocking traffic, there needs to be a local yellow for a few laps, send out facilities to remove the car, etc. But the racing continues. The frequent yellows kept the racing close, but this would not have done had this effect had there not been so many well prepared race cars racing. There were four cars running nose to tail with 15 minutes left in the race. To make it all better the classic colors of the #59 Brumos Porsche returned to victory lane. The drivers names were Donahue, Law, Garcia and Rice but Hurley Haywood was in the pit lane with the team and I am sure Peter Gregg was there in spirit. It was a great race had it been a one hour sprint, but add to it the fact that it was a 24 hour endurance race and it should be remembered in history.

Then it was the NASCAR teams chance. We had read of nothing good during the offseason. Many teams no longer had sponsorhips, many good drivers were without rides, many teams had folded, there was just nothing good in the news. But when the gates to the garages in Daytona opened, there were many teams without garage space because all of the slots were full. There were many of the teams that had folded were actually folded into other teams planning for the future. Many of the laid off shop workers had gotten together and put together volunteer efforts to get an unsponsored single car effort in the 500, or the truck race, or Nationwide race. Sure there were plenty of blank fenders and hoods on the cars, but racers are used to dealing with tough circumstances and had found ways to make it all happen. This was not unlike racing during the ‘74 fuel crisis, or during the lean times of the ’70’s or in the early years when drivers drove the cars to the race track. Bottom line is that racers are racers. They work harder when times are tough and get a car to the race track.

The racing stated with practice sessions in which many cars were needing to be adjusted, tuned and many drivers had to clean out the cobwebs of the off season with no testing. The Budweiser shootout was a crash fest, but generally this was from drivers being aggressive and trying to win the race at all costs, not any side effects from the lack of testing. The finish was a surprise (you already know who won) but I think it was yet another argument for an adjustment to the rules that allow the cars to race back to the line on the last lap, rather than making the finish a judgement call at an arbitrary point around the track and feeding all of the blogs with fuel for comment. There can be exceptions when the wreck is ahead of the leaders and there can be a gentleman’s agreement to not pass if you are behind the accident, but it is something that need changing.

The ARCA race was somewhat bothersome. In distant years past this race was a crash fest with many inexperienced drivers. More recent years the RE/Max ARCA drivers had done a good job at Daytona, with more experienced drivers, teams and better cars. But this year seemed to be a return to days of some big violent crashes. There were three drivers with serious injuries (update they are all home and resting comfortably). Was this a cause of the off season? Not really, most of the ARCA teams are small budget teams that do very little testing in the off season. It was just a series of racing accidents that happen. This year the ones that happened collected a few more cars than typical. The ARCA teams should have a good year, even if some of them will find it tougher than usual to find funding for their racing efforts.

Sprint Cup qualifying had some unusual people show up at the top of the heap, but that is nothing new. There are surprises many years. The only surprise was how strong some of the new teams belonging to Jeremy Mayfield and Tommy Baldwin were. These were brand new single car teams that showed up to see if they could find a miracle. Those teams did find the miracle, but teams for Joe Nemechek, Brad Keselowski, Kirk Shelmerdine, Mike Wallace and others did not catch the miracle. The twin 150 qualifying racers were good races with few mishaps. There were some team efforts to get cars into the field. There were many great stories, but also many dreams shattered. If there had been a consolation race for the teams that did not qualify it would have been a good race. Surely this could be fit into the schedule somewere during the week in the future maybe.

The Camping World Truck series race was a great story in battling the odds. Todd Bodine showed up at the race with no sponsors, in hopes to something would turn up. He battled back from penalties and mishaps to win the race.

Saturday opened with Sprint Cup practice. The ugly gremlin of tire problems reared its head. Of all of the teams for it to affect, it chose one of Goodyear’s most regular critics in the garage area, Tony Stewart. His teammate, Ryan Newman exploded a tire right in front of Tony. The two crashed and both ended up going to back up cars. Tony made comments he might not have really wanted to make, but a tire failure had just cost his team two race cars, and their best chances to win the Daytona 500.

Tony Stewart took out his anger in the form of a great drive in the Nationwide series race later in he day, winning a great battle with Carl Edwards finshing second. The race was no more eventful than typical for the season opener for the Natiowide cars. The most notable thing to me this series is the number of announcers, drivers, and fans that still refer this as the Busch series. Old habits die hard (was that another sponsor plug?).

Finally we get to the main event, the Daytona 500. The first thing I noted was that there were no empty fenders. Tommy Baldwin’s car now had Red Bank Outfitters (I don’t know, look them up on the Google search up there in the corner) as a sponsor for at least this race. NASCAR played things on the cautious side with a caution flag for everyone to check tires after 25 laps. The notable thing at this point was that Jeff Gordon was going to have tire trouble all day because of some overly aggressive camber settings. This just can’t be easily changed during pit stops and it causes big changes in many other chassis settings. Gordon seemed to realize this and basically drove slower later in the race running outside of the top ten most of the day.

Kyle Busch seemed to have started off where he was at the end of the 26 race “regular season” from last year by dominating the race in the early going. There was one big accident during the race. I suppose how you saw the accident depended on your opinion of Dale Jr., but there was a comming together of him and Brian Vickers with both of them racing for the lucky dog position. Rookie sensation was taken out in one of those racing accidents that everyone gets involved in from time to time. That left Scott Speed’s unimpressive 35th place finish as the best finishing rookie. Defending race champion, Ryna Newman had bad luck all week and the 500 was no exception. He got down two laps due to a long green flag pit stop early and never fought his way back from it.

The hope for the Ford teams had come from the Wood Brothers entry for Bill Elliott, but during the race he was never a factor running quietly all day in the 20-25th position. The only Fords that were close otherwise were Kenseth and McMurry. McMurry got caught up in the Dale Jr-Brian Vickers incident, leving Kenseth as the only Ford anywhere near the top of the race.

I spent half of the afternoon with the laptop on weather.com watching how fast the rain was approaching. So was everyone in the pit lane. Matt Kenseth took the lead just before Aric Almirola spun and had contact with Kasey Kahne. This caution ended up being the last, as the rains soon came. Looking at the weather radar, it appeared that 3/4th to one hour of rain was going to be at the track at least. Then it would involve more drying of the track. This is more of a problem after the sun has set, so NASCAR called off the race with Matt Kenseth as the winner.

My observations from the weeks? Well I have a few, one is that racing is alive and well in spite of the economy. In fact I think it will be better in the long run. Many of the teams had gotten into a cost is no object race of money. With the consolidations and fund shortages it has brought some reality into the way they race. The ban on testing may be a good thing with some modifications. I hope NASCAR and other sanctioning bodies realize the sensibility of this, even when economic times are good. In some sort of modified way these testing bans will be good for everyone. Last year I had predicted that there would no longer be small independent teams making races, that the emergence of Toyota had left no room for them. Well, the state of the economy has made room for them. There were several at Daytona with a good chance of making the race, and a couple of them did. I do wish that NASCAR would eleminate the 35 reserved spots for the races. Kirk Shelmerdine had a real chance, enough of a chance that they will be back for more. NASCAR has no worry of short fields this year.

More to come.