October 7, 2007
By Kim Roberson

Kim Roberson

It is hard to believe it has been a year since I was at my very first Talladega race. Today marks the one true wildcard in the Chase….we know which 43 men will start at the drop of the green flag, but we have no idea who will still be running at the finish. The “big one” is inevitable; it is only a matter of how many cars are involved. We also have the unknown of this being the first Car of Tomorrow race at a Superspeedway. How will the new car drive…and draft…compared to the old one? Lessons learned today will be implemented in four months when the 2008 season begins the full time reign of the CoT.

With all of the unknowns at a track like this, it always amazes me when someone suggests we have the last race of the season at Daytona.

Why on earth would you want to leave what has always…at least so far as the Nextel Cup goes…been the deciding race in the hands of chance? Plate tracks are unlike any other, and their outcomes are less than predictable. Sure, you can assume that the lead cars will be from

Hendrick Motorsports or DEI or even Joe Gibbs Racing. However, there is always that “big one” factor that looms like a black rain cloud in the sky. What lap will it happen on, and who will it take out? It doesn’t even have to be a multi-car crash that changes things. Look at the end result last year…last lap in turn three and Brian Vickers gets his first Nextel Cup win by taking out the two leaders…Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- as they can almost see the checkered flag flying. It can also put a nail in the coffin of some drivers who have already fallen on hard times in the first three races of the Chase: Kurt Busch and Denny Hamlin.

So why would you want to leave a race like this…where the end result is almost as much left to chance as racing ability and the speed of the car… as the deciding race of the season?

I understand the history that is Daytona, and if the racing was more like Atlanta or even Richmond, I could see finishing the season there. However, it isn’t. The end result of the race is a total crap shoot. One bad move by a driver could take out a quarter of the field, as it did a few years ago when Jimmie Johnson started the “big one” and left the infield looking like a junk yard.

Superspeedways are a race of chance…and a nerve wracking one at that. I don’t know about you, but I sit on the edge of my seat, watching the jostling in the pack, just waiting for someone to make a slight error in judgment. That is all it takes. One driver mis-judges the amount of room he has between him and the car next to him and boom, there you go. Already the drivers are complaining the new spoiler is impeding their ability to see the guys behind them…there is no telling what that factor alone will lead to today…lane changes are a scary proposition at best, and taking a drivers’ ability to make that move on his own away from him will only make things trickier today.

The old cars have proven their worth time and time again as drivers like Elliott Sadler, Michael Waltrip, Ryan Newman, Dale Earnhardt and Ricky Craven, have ended their day by flipping their cars wheels-up. The new car is supposed to make that tumble even safer when it happens. Not IF it happens…but when, because you know it's coming. At least one driver today will finish way too early, with his car in way too many pieces. But he will walk away with a grumble and a shrug, saying they will be back again next week. And more than likely, his demise will have not been any of his own doing.

Restrictor plate races are a "love them or hate them" kind of race. Fans either find themselves entranced by watching the cars racing around at nearly 200 miles an hour, inches apart…or they hate the fact that the plate has caused them to be bunched up like they are and claim that plate racing isn’t real racing. Those folks feel that the cars should be set on the track, free of restriction, to race as fast as the engines will take them.

In this day and age, that is talking about cars going in excess of 220 miles an hour. A speed that Rusty Wallace called “crazy fast” a few years back when he tested the new surface at Talladega minus a restrictor plate. He was very quick to point out that he was not comfortable racing that fast, and wouldn’t want to do it with 42 other cars. “I will remember for the rest of my life. We'd all been wondering what it would feel like to run at Talladega again without the plates and now I know. I'll bet we could be running speeds up to 235 (mph) without the plates if we spent time doing some tweaking…But I'll tell you this -- there's no way we could be out there racing at those speeds," Wallace explained in 2004 when his car hit 228 mph at Talladega. "It was neat to be out there running that fast by myself, but it would be insane to think we could have a pack of cars out there doing that."

Craven recounted the wild ride he took in 1996. He mentioned on the “Drivers Seat’ Friday that he remembered hitting Hut Stricklen’s bumper, and crashing, but had no idea how many times he had spun and flipped until he was laying in the Birmingham Hospital later that night, watching it being replayed on the TV in his hospital room. He said that crash put him in the most pain that he had ever been in -- in his racing career. Craven ending up with a cracked vertebrae, bruised lungs, and a swollen eye. In that same race, Bill Elliott crashed and broke his femur. In the July race that year, Dale Earnhardt went spinning out of control after Ernie Irvan pushed Sterling Marlin into the side of the No. 3 car.

Superspeedway racing is not for the faint of heart. Even with a restrictor plate to slow you down.

You also have to take into consideration the safety factor for the fans. No fence would be both strong enough to contain a hurtling car traveling at 210+ mph and be able to be seen through. ISC would not be able to get insurance to cover the fans sitting in the front rows of the stands at the track because the car becomes a 3400 pound projectile at that speed, and would likely kill anyone it hits who is sitting in the first 10 rows of the track. If you want to see how easily a speeding race car and tear down a fence around a track, take a look at the accident that led to restrictor plates in the first place: Bobby Allison losing control and going airborne at Talladega 20 years ago. The fact that no one in the stands was killed is still amazing to this day.

Ask yourself if you would want to be that person sitting in the stands as that car came careening in your direction. I know I sure wouldn’t want to be sitting in that seat.

I find racing at Talladega and Daytona exciting, especially in person. I have many “old school” friends who hate it, and refuse to watch it because in their minds the plates remove any “real racing” from the track. However, you can’t have it both ways in this day and age. The only other option would be to lessen the horsepower on the engines and slow them down before they ever leave the shop. When was the last time a NASCAR team was interested in SLOWING their car down instead of speeding it up? It goes against the grain. It isn’t going to happen.

Danny “Chocolate” Myers was talking on Sirius Radio last Thursday about the way the teams used to go to Talladega.

“We’d arrive on Tuesday, and go through tech. Wednesday we’d practice in the morning…. with the qualifying engine, and then take lunch. Then we’d come back and practice some more. Thursday we’d qualify….and change the engine. Friday we’d practice some more with the race engine.” Myers said. “Back then, we’d arrive at the track and get set up for the race. Today you have to arrive at the track ready for the race….or you are behind the curve.”

So today we sit and we watch…some with the interest in watching a train wreck about to happen, and others with the awe inspired by realizing that the cars on the track are doing more than three times what most of us do on the highway day in and day out…and they are doing it a whole lot closer to one another than we would ever imagine doing.

And a message to the fans. If a HMS driver wins, please don’t throw your beer cans. Remember, the next time these guys come to a Superspeedway, Dale Jr. will be one of “them”…and he won’t be driving a beer car.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.