It was a weekend of ups and downs for your humble author. Up: meeting model and FIAT television-commercial star Catrinel Menghia in Las Vegas, albeit for a moment too brief to pitch my admittely unconvincing case. ("Yes, I know your husband is far wealthier and better-looking than I am — but I can play 'The Blower's Daughter' on the six-string Ovation.") Down: not receiving an invitation to attend the Camaro ZL1 launch at VIR. The flights back and forth to Las Vegas, combined with various activities once I was on the ground, meant that I received my news in short bursts of permitted cell-phone activation. So. The Daytona 500 dragged out over three calendar days. Approximately ten million Facebook users made "image macros" featuring everything from ALMS prototypes to LeMons racers driving in the rain. Juan Pablo Montoya ran into a jet-engined track drier, prompting another ten million people to make jokes about "Hit the pace car, Cole" and "Don't let the invisible fire hurt my friend!" About.com's lead writer, Aaron Gold, shit-canned Chevrolet's trailer-park supercar at VIR in what can best be described as "a completely avoidable incident". Let's discuss.
It doesn't bother me when people who know nothing about cars or racing make fun of NASCAR for not running in the rain. By contrast, when people who should know better — drivers I know with experience up to and including Rolex GT racing — run their mouths about it, it does bother me. It further reinforces the idea that there are two separate worlds of car racing in this country and both sides are pig-head ignorant concerning the other. Oval tracks and racing in the rain have traditionally been mutually exclusive. The historical basis of this probably goes back to the fact that, while European racing has its roots in public-road events, early American races were commonly held on horse tracks and dirt ovals. Almost immediately after opening in 1909, Indianapolis Motor Speedway became a brick course, and wet bricks simply have no traction at all, so the Indy 500 remained dry-only even after the transition to conventional paving. To this day, the major oval-racing sanctions don't race in the rain, although the IRL does run road courses under wet conditions. With that said, there is a growing trend among small-track operators in the United States to permit, encourage, or even mandate racing in the rain in the slower classes. The Hoosier dirt-stocker tires which have long been used for road-course wet racing have become good enough to permit tolerable speeds on quarter-mile ovals. Since those drivers are used to relatively low corner speeds on those mildly-banked, short-radius-turn tracks, many of them have greeted the changes with open arms. It's always better to race than to sit and wait, you see. Alas, the same is not true for major-sanction racing on superspeedways. Road racers are very proud of racing in the rain, but the fact of the matter is that there are very few high-speed corners left on major road courses, and where those turns do exist, as with Road Atlanta's first turn, there are often serious accidents when it rains. The corner loading a car experiences in pretty much every turn, everywhere, of the Random Hick-Targeted Product 400 Somehwere In The Middle Of Flyover Country exceeds Road Atlanta's Turn One by a factor of three or more. In a full-throttle NASCAR race, run in a constant standing-water situation, (and don't forget, water runs down a banked turn) every corner entry for every racer would be a hasty, on-the-fly calculation with the penalty for guessing wrong being a full-speed wall impact of the type rarely seen in the sport today. Drivers would die. It's as simple as that… …and that's the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario would be situations where it rains lightly, a dry line forms in the draft line, that line runs up to normal pace, and a driver is nudged out onto wet pavement, on slicks or intermediates, at over two hundred miles per hour. Don't confuse that with the tire-smoking melees we see in NASCAR today, or the hit to the wall Danica took last week after full-locking for five hundred feet. It would be the equivalent of simply driving, full-throttle, into the SAFER barrier at 200mph. That's not courage. That's stupidity, and no NASCAR or IRL driver in his right mind would sign up for it. The institutional knowledge for running a superspeedway in intermediate conditions simply doesn't exist among the teams and it would have to be paid for in blood. If you want that to happen, you aren't a racing fan. You're the same kind of person who would have enjoyed watching lions tearing people apart in the Colosseum. Go home and take your "TAPOUT" pants with you. Real race fans, along with anyone else who has ever observed the "competition" of F1 cars droning through four-minute laps when standing water forms can also understand how boring it can be to watch rain racing. At safe standing-water speeds, NASCARs at Talladega would appear to be doing pace laps. It would be mind-numbing. Why bother? Why not just run the race when conditions are correct? Baseball could theoretically be played in the rain, as well, but nobody wants to watch it and they don't bother to do it. It isn't entertaining, and NASCAR is meant to be entertainment. Road racers get snippy about that, too, but that's the way it is. I can guarantee you that if eighty thousand people started showing up at my NASA races, we would change the format to accomodate those people in a heartbeat. At that point, if there's real prize money involved, we can turn it into figure-eight racing for all I care. So, let's review. Superspeedway racing in the rain is dangerous, it is unpredictable, and it is boring. One last thing. For most of the drivers, it probably wouldn't be any fun. The average racer isn't really any good in wet conditions. I've seen that proven again and again in my own little corner of the racing world. Although history has shown that I am a better wet-weather driver than I am a dry-weather one, just judging by my results over time against the same people, I'd rather drive a dry race. Driving a car with slicks or intermediates in wet conditions is a constant battle to judge conditions and come up with a slightly better answer than the guy next to you, who could kill you through idiocy at pretty much any moment. I can still vividly remember an incident at a NASA race where a guy looped his Spec Miata during the pace lap and took out a bunch of cars. Everybody involved in that incident lost their weekend. Driving in the rain is not fun. It is grueling, technical work and most people can't do it worth a damn. Which brings me, at long last, to Aaron Gold and the wrecked ZL1. Aaron had ESP turned on, he was proceeding at what he believed to be a safe, reasonable pace, and he still trashed the car. Aaron is far from a hothead. He is a decent, well-spoken, conservative fellow. I guarantee you that the phrase "Watch this!" never came to his lips or even his mind. He thought he was well within the envelope — but he wasn't. At some point the manufacturers and their PR people need to understand that cars like the ZL1 are simply too much for most people to drive on a track without direct supervision, and maybe even with direct supervision. Most journalists are twenty to forty seconds off the maximum safe pace on a two-minute track. I don't even see what you can learn about a car driving that slowly. You might as well rip it around a Wal-Mart parking lot and write that up. Most journalists would learn more from taking a set of passenger laps with a qualified driver and listening to what that person has to say. Alternately, they could take the Motor Trend way — admit that nobody on the roster can drive and hire Randy Pobst (or Jason Saini, or Ryan Eversley, et al) to do the real work while they roll around in a loaner Phantom and give each other backrubs. A middle-ground solution, and one I hereby suggest, is that manufacturers require NASA Time Trial certification, or similar, to attend a track event. That's something you can get in six or seven weekends — or less if you want to pay Skip Barber to coach you up to competence. It's a minimum requirement and it would be easy to meet. Had Aaron received that level of coaching and properly internalized it, I am virtually certain that Chevrolet would have one more functioning ZL1 in the fleet today. Right now it's all fun, games, and finger-pointing Jalopnik articles, but on the day that the Lifestyle Editor of MinorLeagueWebsiteWithTwentyVistorsADay.com is decapitated by a Armco barrier, the back-slapping eternal press party will come to a sharp halt faster than people can make jokes about hitting a track drier. Which reminds me. How many Colombians do you need to stop the race? Just… Juan! Tip your waitress! from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com | |||
| |||
| |||
|
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
NASCAR Shouldn’t Run In The Rain — And Neither Should Autojournos
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Archive
-
▼
2012
(7297)
-
▼
February
(621)
- Hyundai i-oniq Concept: A Hatchback for Hyundai’s ...
- Citroën DS3 Racing Limited Edition Honors Rally Go...
- Audi Announces U.S. A3 e-tron Pilot Program; R8 e-...
- Swedish Film: Volvo V40 Official Photos and Video ...
- 2013 Buick Enclave Headed to the Big Apple with Up...
- Volkswagen Prices 2013 CC Sedan From $31,430, Top ...
- Nissan Leaf EV Available to Customers Nationwide i...
- Cars.com Reviews the 2012 BMW 3 Series
- Volkswagen Looking To Overtake Honda In The United...
- Jaguar XF Gains Wagon Body Style at the 2012 Genev...
- Name That Car Clock: Black Analog Quartz
- Nikkei: Honda’s Future Hinges On A Kei Car
- 2013 Ferrari F12berlinetta: First Look
- PSA And GM Are Doing It While Marchionne Watches
- LeMons Good/Bad Idea of the Week: Bribing with Dio...
- BRAND NEW Hates BRAND NEW Jaguar Logo. And They Sh...
- Ferrari F12 Berlinetta; More Wretched Excess
- Kinetic Motorsports to Expand Availability of Perf...
- 2013 Jaguar XF Sportbrake Officially Debuts [Genev...
- Cars.com News Briefs: Feb. 29, 2012
- Jaguar XF Sportbrake; A Diesel Wagon, But Alas, No...
- 2013 Ferrari F12berlinetta – Official Photos and Info
- Mini Adds John Cooper Works Edition to Countryman
- Chinese Government Fools Autoblog, Autoguide, Left...
- Driven: Volkswagen Cross Up! / E-Up! / Up! GT Conc...
- Review: A Week In A 2012 Nissan Leaf
- Junkyard Find: 1977 Fiat 124 Sport Spider
- Piston Slap: Justy-fied Freestylin’ over CVTs, Par...
- Back That You-Know-What Up
- Cars.com Family Reviews the 2012 Nissan Juke
- Dodge Unveils Test Configurator for 2013 Dart
- 2013 Volkswagen Golf GTI Cabriolet Photos and Info...
- Supplier Magna Steyr Creates Oddball MILA Coupic C...
- Name That Exhaust Note, Episode 125
- 2013 Mini John Cooper Works Countryman Gets Specs ...
- TechArt Announces Body Bits, Exhaust System for 99...
- Subaru, Mazda Rise, Ford Crashes, in Consumer Repo...
- The Iranian Connection In The GM/Peugeot Alliance
- 2012 Kia K9 RWD Sedan Photos and Info: Insert Unin...
- Fisker Hires Former Chrysler Boss LaSorda, Company...
- 2013 Volkswagen CC Starts at $30,250
- Volvo V40 Gets 254-Horsepower 5-Cylinder, Start-St...
- Lamborghini SUV Rendered, Coming in Concept Form Soon
- Nissan Teases Hi-Cross Concept
- Aston Martin Updates the Vantage Range for 2012
- Quote Of The Day: “Five Years From Now, When I’m N...
- Fisker Names Ex-Chrysler Boss Tom Lasorda As New CEO
- Backup Cameras Likely Mandated for 2014
- NASCAR Shouldn’t Run In The Rain — And Neither Sho...
- This Is Not The Most Beautiful Cars Of All Times. ...
- Cars.com News Briefs: Feb. 28, 2012
- Kia KH Heralds The Start Of The “Monkfish Age” In ...
- Lighter, More Muscular And More Striking Boxster P...
- When Was The Last Time You Used Your Sunroof?
- Marchionne: Every 5th Auto Plant In Europe Should ...
- Coming Soon: Kia's K9 Flagship
- Junkyard Find: 1971 Fiat 124 Sport Spider
- Car Collector’s Corner: 1985 Oregon Highway Patrol...
- Best Selling Cars Around The Globe: Chile Loves Ja...
- Tycho’s Illustrated History Of Chinese Cars: A Red...
- What's the Most Affordable Full-Size Crossover?
- 2012 Toyota Camry: Car Seat Check
- Odd Couplings: GM To Buy 7 Percent Of PSA? What For?
- Blind Spot: Electric Cars And “The Freedom Thing”
- 2012 Audi A1 Quattro Driven: 256 HP, All-Wheel Dri...
- Pininfarina Cambiano Sports-Sedan Concept Revealed...
- Jaguar XF Sportbrake Brochure Leaked [Geneva Auto ...
- 2013 Lamborghini Aventador Roadster Spy Photos: Th...
- 2014 Chevrolet Corvette C7 Spied! We Catch the Sev...
- Bill Ford’s “Blueprint For Mobility” Calls For Car...
- Nissan Hi-Cross Concept is Coming, Probably a Hybr...
- Audi Announces Electric Pilot Program
- Jaguar XKR-Based Lyonheart K Pays Homage to E-Type...
- Leaf’s Grandfather
- Name That Car Clock: Extremely Classy Cartier Analog
- TTAC Photo Documentary: Carlos Ghosn Talks The Yen...
- Kia K9 Rear Drive Sedan Spied In South Korea
- Land Rover Eyes Convertible for Evoque
- QOTD: What’s wrong with this statement?
- Recall Alert: 2012 Nissan Murano and Nissan Rogue
- Finally, Real Pictures Of The Volvo V40
- Capsule Review: 2012 Hyundai Azera
- Cars.com News Briefs: Feb. 27, 2012
- Name That Shifter, No. 65
- Recall Alert: 2011-12 Porsche Cayenne
- Recall Alert: 2011-2012 Infiniti M, QX and Nissan ...
- Detroit Sleeps Through Chinese SUV Boom
- Junkyard Find: 1983 Mazda GLC Sedan
- Piston Slap: Frontal Area, Our Friend?
- Would You Buy It? Chevrolet Cruze Station Wagon
- 2012 Hyundai Azera First Drive: It’s a Long Way to...
- Avoidable Contact: Lexus killed Saab, but GM let S...
- Hammer Time: Past Profits, Future Prophets
- China Billionaire Special: The Dartz Prombron Blac...
- 2012 Mercedes-Benz C300 4Matic
- Junkyard Find: 1992 Ford Tempo GL
- Most-Read Car Reviews of the Week
- TrueCar Projects 14 Million New Car Market, Confir...
- High Speed Pursuits Endanger Your House
- Car Collector’s Corner: 1965 Mercury Comet-Rescued...
-
▼
February
(621)
No comments:
Post a Comment