Late race passes.dirty air.....?

H

HardScrabble

Guest
Just for kicks went back 10 year to 1993............30 races on the schedule. Lets look at the finishes in these terms (late race passes) of 20 of them.

Rockingham.......Rusty Wallace leads the last 70 laps
Richmond.......Davey leads all but 4 oflast 157 laps, wins by 4 seconds
Darlington.....Dale E. leads all but 1 of last 149 including the last 45
Bristol...Rusty Wallace leads last 125 laps
N. Wilkes......Rusty leads last 102
Martinsville...Rusty leads 409 of 500 laps, all but one of last 83
Charlotte..Dale E. leads last 38 laps
Dover...DE leads all but one of last 154 laps including the last 62
Pocono.....Kyle leads 148 of the 200 laps, only the last 15 straight but wins by 5 seconds
Michigan......Mark Martin leads 141 of 200 laps, runs out of gas with with 9 laps left, Ricky Rudd wins.
Daytona....DE leads the last 28 laps
New Hampshire.....Rusty leads the last 30 laps
Michigan...Mark Martin leads 83 of last 91 laps including the last 34
Darlington.....Mark Martin leads al but 3 of lst 103 laps, including the last 48
Richmond...Rusty Wallace leads last 134 laps
Dover.......Ernie Irvan leads last 74 laps
N. Wilkes..Rusty leads last 102 laps
Charlotte.....Erinie leads all but 6 laps of the race including the last 60
Rockingham......Rusty leads last 52 laps
Phoenix....Mark leads all but 1 of last 96 laps including the last 23

Of course some of these were close, kinda like Pocono last Sunday, others were not even close, some were total blow-outs.
 
Thanks HS. Makes you wonder if "dirty air" is just a new term the drivers are using for an "old problem"... :unsure:
 
NASCAR needs to mandate that air at the tracks be cleaned!
 
HS,

It would appear that all this talk about the great racing of years gone by is just that; all talk.

The fans wanted closer racing, more excitement, bump and run, etc.

Guess what?

NASCAR brought parity into the show and gave the fans just what they wanted.

Now listen to them all cry about the dirty air, the common templates, fuel mileage, and what-all else.

Listen to them carry on about the "great racing" in past years.

But whatever you do, do not remind them of the facts.

The facts being that the racing which they recall so fondly was actually nothing like their recollections.

Like most everything else, the past was better than the present; at least in human memory.

Of course, some of those fans who recall the past so fondly were not there to actually see the past when it was the present, but we should never remind them of the facts; the facts being that an awful lot of those early races were a lot more boring than what we see today.

Leaders walking away from the field, winning by several laps instead of hundreds or thousands of a second.

Leaders running the entire race on one or two sets of tires, instead of two or four tires ever pitstop.

Leaders leading the majority of laps, only one or two cars even being able to come close to being in the same class as those leaders.

Having only one or two teams actually capable of winning every race; the rest there to run for whatever scraps they can pick up.

Yeah HS, I only wish that stockcar racing had really been as great in the "old days" as so many of the younger fans of today recall it.

Maybe they would have a different view if they had actually lived it?
 
Actually boB, the old days were more fun. The technology then was derived from the imaginations of the participants rather than from a room full of college graduate engineers of various and assorted degrees in different fields.
The fun was in "fudging" the mechanics and "massaging" the car to get the win, something that made "Smokey" Yunick a legend, along with "Junior" Johnson and others in the NASCAR series of yore.

The fact remains that more often than not, in the "good old days", the winner was many laps in front of the second place car, but the races were still fun if for no other reason than we were the participants in one role or another. We learned how to find the exciting part of the race elsewhere in the pack when things got drawn out in front, or through watching our driver when he was trying to gain one more position while running in 34th place.

With the parity of today, racing isn't what we grew up on. It is designed for the faster crowd of people who want instant success, instant gratification and instant everything. Bigger and better. It isn't as much about who has the best driver but the smartest crew chief and best engineers. It is about who suggests positioning the fender in the best location for maximum air flow tweaking the advantage over something that was never an issue. Shock specialists??? I won't even go there.

Personally I like races on the short tracks where most of the skill is in a drivers hands. A driver winning on a short track where air flow means diddley squat is where the cream rises. And there is nothing more exciting than watching a car come from last to first or even the top ten. You know darn well when that happens, the driver, and car were good. That is fun. That is racing. Daytona, Talledega, Michigan, trade'em all for a New Hampshire, Homestead, add Milwaukee flat track where a driver is key rather than the graduate engineer.

But sarcasm and cynicism aside, look at the crowds who like what they see, and I do admit it is exciting. But nothing replaces the "old days", while the new days are called progress, and it is up to each one of us to decide which we enjoy more. ;)
 
Hey Whiz,

Used to build motors on the back porch steps and did the rest of the car in the dirt driveway because we didn't have a garage available for a good part of one season.

The crew my kid works for buys their motors for ungodly amounts of cash; they've blown more motors this season than we went through in three or four.

The things we used to either build ourselves or remake from junkyard parts for short money all come out of different catalogs and max out the plastic.

Tires which we used to get at least three or four shows from are now tossed away and replaced two, three or four times every 100 or 150 lap show.
Shocks? You're right. Let's not even go there. We used to replace those when they got bent or simply stopped working at all.

We could go on forever here, but what's the sense?
The kids today simply think that racing was better in the past but it is better today or maybe the best is yet to be?
 
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