Illegal Roof Flap Spacers
I was actually at there at the Speedway as this all went down. I had never seen anything like it! A brigade of officials marched down pit road, split up into small groups, and went from car to car looking at something underneath the roof flaps. I didn’t know they were looking at the spacers until I checked my Twitter a few hours later. In all the cars inspected, 31 teams had illegally modified spacers; 16 in Sprint, 15 in Nationwide. Roof flap spacers slip in behind the hinge, which connects the roof flap to the car. The roof flap is used to slow the car down, and more importantly, keep the car on the ground while it is sliding sideways. This is purely a safety feature, so the question is, why would these teams do this? Well, the only reason I could think of, is an advantage by weight. The spacer has to be only a few ounces though! You would think the risk isn’t worth the reward but when it comes to restrictor plate races, the teams might think it could have made a difference. Either way though, it is not good to compromise part of the car’s safety, especially on a track were the cars run wide open at 200+ MPH.
The next chapter of this story: Penalties. NASCAR is almost
certainly going to hand out penalties for this, but to what extent? Initially,
I would think just fines, but it might be more. One of the last times there was
a safety violation; it was from three cars, between Michael Waltrip Racing and JTG
Daugherty Racing. The windshield of their cars were too thin. NASCAR hit the
teams involved hard with a $50,000 fine for the crew chiefs, a suspension of 4
weeks for the crew chiefs and car chiefs and a 25 driver point penalty each. I
don’t think NASCAR will hit the teams that
hard for the roof flap spacers, but suspensions, and more likely, points, are possible
penalty factors. If they do go that
far, it will be devastating to a lot
of teams.
.JPG) |
| Group of 6 officials (Another group came in a few minutes later) |
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| Officials inspecting Jimmie Johnson's car |
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| Up close photo of official inspecting the roof flap |
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| Officials inspecting Carl Edwards car |
Jimmie Johnson Sweeps
Daytona – First since 82’
Well, Jimmie made history again. He dominated the race, and successfully completed his sweep at Daytona, which hasn’t been done since Bobby Allison did it in ’82. This is one of many stats this year that he has added to his career, like winning 4 All-Star races, which is the most of any driver. The sweep is something you wouldn’t exactly expect when you look at Jimmie’s stats. At Daytona, he currently has only 8 top 5’s in 24 starts, which is only 1/3 of the time. Also, he has 5 DNF’s!! That’s the beauty of restrictor plate races, I guess. Jimmie also just tied Matt Kenseth with 4 wins and is leading the points by 49 points now. No doubt, Jimmie is a strong contender for the Championship.
Well, Jimmie made history again. He dominated the race, and successfully completed his sweep at Daytona, which hasn’t been done since Bobby Allison did it in ’82. This is one of many stats this year that he has added to his career, like winning 4 All-Star races, which is the most of any driver. The sweep is something you wouldn’t exactly expect when you look at Jimmie’s stats. At Daytona, he currently has only 8 top 5’s in 24 starts, which is only 1/3 of the time. Also, he has 5 DNF’s!! That’s the beauty of restrictor plate races, I guess. Jimmie also just tied Matt Kenseth with 4 wins and is leading the points by 49 points now. No doubt, Jimmie is a strong contender for the Championship.
Safety at Daytona –
Present and Future
This weekend was another great example of how important NASCAR’s implemented safety features are, but there are things they need to improve. Late in the Nationwide race, Travis Pastrana’s car was tipped by Cole Whitt causing it to slam into Jason White’s car and both hit the wall. Once the wreckage had settled, Jason climbed out of his car and went to the ground, trying to catch his breath. As soon as he did this, I went silent in concern. He later got up and told the media he was ok. For Travis, he got out of his car just fine, but on his scanner, you could hear it in his voice. You could tell the impact hurt and took his breath away. NASCAR mandates that all their drivers must wear HANS devices, special seatbelts, and sit in seats with full containment headrests. Also the tracks that NASCAR goes to have many walls with SAFER barriers, which softens the force of hits considerably. There are many more safety improvements that have been made in the cars. If it wasn’t for these improvements, I don’t want to even want to think of what Travis and Jason might be feeling. The same with many other drivers who have experienced wreaks we don’t ever want to see again. Another example is the wrecks we had a day later in the Cup race. The scariest one that comes to mind, to me, was when Denny Hamlin swerved (something must have broken) and overcorrected the car, sending him straight into the outside wall (which in that spot, did not have a SAFER barrier) and into oncoming traffic. Many cars, amazingly, were able to avoid him, but as AJ Allmendinger approached, he had nowhere to go. He t-boned Denny in the left rear quarter panel and sent the car’s rear flying two feet or more in the air as it violently spun around. It was a hard hit for both. My first concern was Denny’s back, which he had to be sidelined for earlier in the season. He was out for a whole month while it healed from the crash. Denny and AJ both said they were fine, although AJ admitted it really knocked the breath out of him for a moment. This shows the amazing effectiveness and importance of these safety innovations, but there is still more that can be done, and should be done.
Something the last few years have showed us, is that if there is a wall, the car will somehow find a way to hit it. The crash that hurt Denny’s back did not have a SAFER barrier, and there are so many more horrible wrecks that have not had them, as well. This is why NASCAR needs to mandate SAFER barriers 100% around the tracks they run at, on both the inside and outside wall. I know SAFER barriers are very expensive and some of these track do not have the money to do this, so I think NASCAR should work with them, giving them a few years to fully implement this, and maybe even splitting the cost 50/50. The place where Denny crashed and hurt his back also had a dip in the asphalt, which brings me to my second point. There are little “quirks” at some of these tracks that need to be addressed. Maybe NASCAR needs to send out a safety specialist to walk the track and figure out if these are a danger or not. Hands down, NASCAR has done an excellent job with safety innovations, but it, like almost anything in life, can definitely continue to be improved.
This weekend was another great example of how important NASCAR’s implemented safety features are, but there are things they need to improve. Late in the Nationwide race, Travis Pastrana’s car was tipped by Cole Whitt causing it to slam into Jason White’s car and both hit the wall. Once the wreckage had settled, Jason climbed out of his car and went to the ground, trying to catch his breath. As soon as he did this, I went silent in concern. He later got up and told the media he was ok. For Travis, he got out of his car just fine, but on his scanner, you could hear it in his voice. You could tell the impact hurt and took his breath away. NASCAR mandates that all their drivers must wear HANS devices, special seatbelts, and sit in seats with full containment headrests. Also the tracks that NASCAR goes to have many walls with SAFER barriers, which softens the force of hits considerably. There are many more safety improvements that have been made in the cars. If it wasn’t for these improvements, I don’t want to even want to think of what Travis and Jason might be feeling. The same with many other drivers who have experienced wreaks we don’t ever want to see again. Another example is the wrecks we had a day later in the Cup race. The scariest one that comes to mind, to me, was when Denny Hamlin swerved (something must have broken) and overcorrected the car, sending him straight into the outside wall (which in that spot, did not have a SAFER barrier) and into oncoming traffic. Many cars, amazingly, were able to avoid him, but as AJ Allmendinger approached, he had nowhere to go. He t-boned Denny in the left rear quarter panel and sent the car’s rear flying two feet or more in the air as it violently spun around. It was a hard hit for both. My first concern was Denny’s back, which he had to be sidelined for earlier in the season. He was out for a whole month while it healed from the crash. Denny and AJ both said they were fine, although AJ admitted it really knocked the breath out of him for a moment. This shows the amazing effectiveness and importance of these safety innovations, but there is still more that can be done, and should be done.
Something the last few years have showed us, is that if there is a wall, the car will somehow find a way to hit it. The crash that hurt Denny’s back did not have a SAFER barrier, and there are so many more horrible wrecks that have not had them, as well. This is why NASCAR needs to mandate SAFER barriers 100% around the tracks they run at, on both the inside and outside wall. I know SAFER barriers are very expensive and some of these track do not have the money to do this, so I think NASCAR should work with them, giving them a few years to fully implement this, and maybe even splitting the cost 50/50. The place where Denny crashed and hurt his back also had a dip in the asphalt, which brings me to my second point. There are little “quirks” at some of these tracks that need to be addressed. Maybe NASCAR needs to send out a safety specialist to walk the track and figure out if these are a danger or not. Hands down, NASCAR has done an excellent job with safety innovations, but it, like almost anything in life, can definitely continue to be improved.
Does Restrictor Plate
Racing Need to Continue Changing?
No doubt, the teams have worked hard and made a lot of progress with the Gen6 car on restrictor plate races, but there is still something I think they need to work on. The race was interesting, but like the Daytona 500 this year, it is very hard to pass. Because of this, the last few laps were almost identical to those of the 500. There was a long “train” of 7-9 cars all behind one another, just stuck. If one, or even two of them tried to go to the outside and make a move they would go straight to the pack, which trailed about ½ second off the tail end of the train. Should NASCAR continue tweaking their restrictor plate race cars? I would just like to see what we used to, when it comes to unexpected finishes. The ones where you never knew who would take the checkered flag because in a matter of two turns, another driver could rocket to the front! Why don’t we see this anymore? What could the problem be? Maybe it is an aerodynamic issue? Maybe the engineers could tweak the car’s physics a certain way and allow them to be able to pass more easily. Some people think they should slow the speeds down. I’m not an engineer, so I can’t tell you what could possibly fix it. I’m confident, though, they could figure it out.
No doubt, the teams have worked hard and made a lot of progress with the Gen6 car on restrictor plate races, but there is still something I think they need to work on. The race was interesting, but like the Daytona 500 this year, it is very hard to pass. Because of this, the last few laps were almost identical to those of the 500. There was a long “train” of 7-9 cars all behind one another, just stuck. If one, or even two of them tried to go to the outside and make a move they would go straight to the pack, which trailed about ½ second off the tail end of the train. Should NASCAR continue tweaking their restrictor plate race cars? I would just like to see what we used to, when it comes to unexpected finishes. The ones where you never knew who would take the checkered flag because in a matter of two turns, another driver could rocket to the front! Why don’t we see this anymore? What could the problem be? Maybe it is an aerodynamic issue? Maybe the engineers could tweak the car’s physics a certain way and allow them to be able to pass more easily. Some people think they should slow the speeds down. I’m not an engineer, so I can’t tell you what could possibly fix it. I’m confident, though, they could figure it out.
