Mike Hembree: Is there still a need for speed?
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers compete earlier this year in the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway. // Wayne Ebinger, NASCAR Scene
COMMENTARY
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – In a sport that’s all about speed, where has all the speed gone?
Through 18 race weekends this season, there have been only two track qualifying records broken. Kyle Busch put up a record lap at Las Vegas in February, and Matt Kenseth set a record at Darlington Raceway in May.
In 2008, there was only one qualifying record broken. Greg Biffle ran 179.442 mph in leading qualifying at Darlington. Oddly enough, the track supposedly too tough to tame was the only one tamed in qualifying-record form.
Isn’t this just a bit strange? Shouldn’t it be a given that virtually every form of motorsports should be marching forward, going ever faster, challenging the norm, advancing the standard? Shouldn’t the quest for more speed be eternal, even in the age of the new car and of NASCAR restrictions on “creative” engineering?
It’s a fact that racing has become slower – and consequently less dangerous – in the past decade. Clearly, some positives follow. There hasn’t been a death in any of NASCAR’s top three series since Dale Earnhardt died on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. In fact, there have been few notable injuries since then.
Tone down the element of danger in auto racing (or bullfighting or alligator wrestling or any number of “out there” competitions), however, and some of the punch is gone.
Fans don’t expect to see cars tumbling over each other and bursting into flames on every lap, but it’s a fact that the draw of the spectacular is very real, and part of the attraction of motorsports is the idea that each competitor is staring death in the face while battling 42 drivers doing the same thing.
It’s sports on the raw edge – it’s not, for example, badminton, and, for many years, that edge was extended as speeds accelerated and teams put drivers and machines to ever more difficult tests.
The wide-open frontier for such activities used to be Talladega Superspeedway. Drivers laughed at the 200 mph mark there even before the track officially opened, and, in 1987, Bill Elliott screamed across the Talladega finish line at 212.809 mph to set an overall NASCAR qualifying record that still stands – and probably will stand forever. Unfortunately, 1987 also was the year Bobby Allison’s car thought it could fly at Talladega and came within a few feet of soaring into the main grandstand. That brought on speed restrictions (understandably), and the wild blue yonder was officially closed to NASCAR drivers.
One of the next big shocking speed moments for NASCAR occurred 10 years later at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The track had been reconfigured and “flipped,” the former backstretch becoming the frontstretch, prior to the fall race that season, and the new layout created rocket speeds. Hot numbers went up on the digital scoreboard throughout qualifying, and eyebrows and blood pressures went up in the garage. Still, few were prepared for the pole run Geoffrey Bodine slammed onto the board – a remarkable 197.478 mph. At a 1.5-mile track. Stunning.
NASCAR doesn’t like flirtation with the magic 200 number, so the speed police stepped in. The next year, Atlanta’s pole speeds were in the 192-193 range, and the fastest lap since then at one of NASCAR’s fastest tracks has been a 194.6. This March’s pole run was only 187.
Is the “slowdown” good or bad?
There are opposing camps. Many drivers say speed has almost nothing to do with racing, that the idea is close competition regardless of the speedometer reading. This is true to a degree, although drivers are notoriously poor judges of such things.
Dale Earnhardt, one of the best “lawyers” ever in the garage, was adamantly opposed to speed legislation. He wanted to put all the Daytona-Talladega restrictor plates in a pile and nuke them. In his view, the speed limit was his big right foot.
Tonight, Cup drivers will race for the first time at a restrictor-plate track since Carl Edwards’ shocking ride into the frontstretch fence at Talladega in April. In the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona, they once again will battle the wind and physics to run as fast as possible – but not as fast as drivers once tested Daytona.
Auto racing always should be about the chill of adventure. You go fast. The other guy goes faster. You meet in the turn. One of you comes out in front on the other side. At speed.
