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Posted on Thu, Aug. 29, 2002
Testing the terrible twosome
By JIM MCLAURIN
The State (Columbia, S.C.)
It is a cruel quirk of NASCAR's Winston Cup schedule that puts Darlington right behind Bristol; sort of like putting the toughest Par 3 on a tough golf course right in front of a double-dogleg par four that has water on the left, a thicket on the right and eight bunkers around the green.
Going from Bristol Motor Speedway, site of last weekend's Sharpie 500, to Darlington Raceway, the track quite rightly nicknamed "Too Tough to Tame," for the Mountain Dew Southern 500, is like swapping the frying pan for the fire. Toss in the fact that no one other than Jeff Gordon, last week's winner, is going to Darlington happy and the situation is ripe for disaster.
"I think so," Mike Beam, the crew chief on Ricky Craven's No. 32 Ford, said at Bristol last Saturday. "You've got to go from here, where you have to give and take and show respect. You've got to give and take there, too – it just don't work out that way."
Who's going to Darlington nursing a grudge? Well, Elliott Sadler was pointing fingers – figuratively and literally – at Joe Nemechek after the two tangled in the early going at Bristol. Rookie Jimmie Johnson won't be sharing tea with Robby Gordon after Gordon punted him on a restart, and Ward Burton got angry enough at Dale Earnhardt, Jr., after he wrecked that he waited for Junior to come around again and tossed his heel protectors at Earnhardt's window. Oh, yeah.
Does anybody remember who Gordon bumped out of the way with three laps to go to take the win? If you don't, Rusty Wallace does.
The only one happy about all of this? The guy selling tickets at Darlington.
Jim Hunter, who's now a vice-president in NASCAR's corporate offices, was president at Darlington in 1999 when the now-classic Dale Earnhardt-Terry Labonte confrontation took place at Bristol the week before they headed to Darlington.
"Earnhardt told me that week that he should get a cut of the ticket sales," Hunter said, laughing. "Our ticket sales the last week went way up, and I'm sure Earnhardt and Labonte's wreck had something to do with that."
In truth, though, Darlington is probably the safest track to follow on the heels of Bristol. Like any good golfer, the good drivers are able to put a bad hole behind them and concentrate on the one at hand, especially when the one coming up is the No. 1 handicapped hole on the course.
Because of its unique egg shape – turns 3 and 4 are much tighter than turns 1 and 2 – and its unusually abrasive surface, Darlington is the most challenging track on the circuit.
Drivers have wrecked at Darlington, for instance, under the leisurely pace of a caution period.
The "Darlington Stripe," caused by a car scraping the outside wall, is still worn as a badge of courage.
"I never looked at it as a big issue," said Kyle Petty, who drives the No. 45 Dodge. "I looked at it as 20 races in 20 weeks, and those were just two in there. But to try to get ready for those two tracks back-to-back can be tough sometimes."
Petty says that, in fact, Darlington is probably the ideal place to go after Bristol.
"Darlington's a good equalizer," he said. "You can't get mad at anything at Darlington but the track.
"We all joke about how the tires wear out leaving pit road – that's just how abrasive the track is. The thing is, you don't have time to race people at Darlington. You end up spending all your time racing the track."
That's not quite it, Petty added. You spend all your time trying to get your car good enough to race the track. And that is often more work than be accomplished in one weekend.
"We can talk about the Kurt Busch-Jimmy Spencer incidents (which started, ironically enough, at Bristol this spring) all we want to, but as soon as they get to Darlington, all they're concentrating on is getting their cars to work. They're screaming more about that than at each other," Petty said.
"I've never seen anybody be able to make their car do what it needed to do good enough at Darlington to run into each other. They can make it ... run into the wall, but not each other. That's a different issue."
Posted on Thu, Aug. 29, 2002
Testing the terrible twosome
By JIM MCLAURIN
The State (Columbia, S.C.)
It is a cruel quirk of NASCAR's Winston Cup schedule that puts Darlington right behind Bristol; sort of like putting the toughest Par 3 on a tough golf course right in front of a double-dogleg par four that has water on the left, a thicket on the right and eight bunkers around the green.
Going from Bristol Motor Speedway, site of last weekend's Sharpie 500, to Darlington Raceway, the track quite rightly nicknamed "Too Tough to Tame," for the Mountain Dew Southern 500, is like swapping the frying pan for the fire. Toss in the fact that no one other than Jeff Gordon, last week's winner, is going to Darlington happy and the situation is ripe for disaster.
"I think so," Mike Beam, the crew chief on Ricky Craven's No. 32 Ford, said at Bristol last Saturday. "You've got to go from here, where you have to give and take and show respect. You've got to give and take there, too – it just don't work out that way."
Who's going to Darlington nursing a grudge? Well, Elliott Sadler was pointing fingers – figuratively and literally – at Joe Nemechek after the two tangled in the early going at Bristol. Rookie Jimmie Johnson won't be sharing tea with Robby Gordon after Gordon punted him on a restart, and Ward Burton got angry enough at Dale Earnhardt, Jr., after he wrecked that he waited for Junior to come around again and tossed his heel protectors at Earnhardt's window. Oh, yeah.
Does anybody remember who Gordon bumped out of the way with three laps to go to take the win? If you don't, Rusty Wallace does.
The only one happy about all of this? The guy selling tickets at Darlington.
Jim Hunter, who's now a vice-president in NASCAR's corporate offices, was president at Darlington in 1999 when the now-classic Dale Earnhardt-Terry Labonte confrontation took place at Bristol the week before they headed to Darlington.
"Earnhardt told me that week that he should get a cut of the ticket sales," Hunter said, laughing. "Our ticket sales the last week went way up, and I'm sure Earnhardt and Labonte's wreck had something to do with that."
In truth, though, Darlington is probably the safest track to follow on the heels of Bristol. Like any good golfer, the good drivers are able to put a bad hole behind them and concentrate on the one at hand, especially when the one coming up is the No. 1 handicapped hole on the course.
Because of its unique egg shape – turns 3 and 4 are much tighter than turns 1 and 2 – and its unusually abrasive surface, Darlington is the most challenging track on the circuit.
Drivers have wrecked at Darlington, for instance, under the leisurely pace of a caution period.
The "Darlington Stripe," caused by a car scraping the outside wall, is still worn as a badge of courage.
"I never looked at it as a big issue," said Kyle Petty, who drives the No. 45 Dodge. "I looked at it as 20 races in 20 weeks, and those were just two in there. But to try to get ready for those two tracks back-to-back can be tough sometimes."
Petty says that, in fact, Darlington is probably the ideal place to go after Bristol.
"Darlington's a good equalizer," he said. "You can't get mad at anything at Darlington but the track.
"We all joke about how the tires wear out leaving pit road – that's just how abrasive the track is. The thing is, you don't have time to race people at Darlington. You end up spending all your time racing the track."
That's not quite it, Petty added. You spend all your time trying to get your car good enough to race the track. And that is often more work than be accomplished in one weekend.
"We can talk about the Kurt Busch-Jimmy Spencer incidents (which started, ironically enough, at Bristol this spring) all we want to, but as soon as they get to Darlington, all they're concentrating on is getting their cars to work. They're screaming more about that than at each other," Petty said.
"I've never seen anybody be able to make their car do what it needed to do good enough at Darlington to run into each other. They can make it ... run into the wall, but not each other. That's a different issue."
But, I have seen drivers use the wall in recent races to pass someone.....forget who but I think it was last year!!