Happy New Year everyone! I sure hope you all had a safe and enjoyable holiday season. Well, since the holidays are behind us, that means only one thing right? Yep, it’s time to get back to the track. Testing starts next Thursday and runs through Saturday at Daytona International Speedway and I simply can’t wait.
Hall and Oates have a song called "Starting All Over Again." A couple of the lyrics go – "Starting all over again is gonna be rough, so rough, but we’re gonna make it” and “We lost what we had that’s why it hurt so bad.” The irony of those lyrics, to me, is this is exactly what these race teams are faced with in this New Year.
Go back to February 2011 at Daytona, where that silky smooth surface let a driver hold it wide open all the way around the joint. You could also do that with someone on your bumper pushing you. This was all being done at over 200 mph. We saw those kinds of speeds all through testing and practice session and in the race itself. That’s just phenomenal for that place.
To me the combination of that super smooth surface combined with the two-car tandems unlocked Pandora’s box. Our racing at the restrictor-plate tracks had evolved from the big pack drafts to these two-car deals because the teams had learned that two cars could dramatically go faster than the old big packs.
Personally, I am a big fan of the two-car draft. It levels the playing field. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a chance to get up front and possibly win. Would rookie Trevor Bayne have won the Daytona 500 without the two-car draft? Would we have had the phenomenal finish at Talladega Superspeedway last year with eight cars crossing the start/finish line in a tight pack?
Take that a step further, who would have ever thought that Dale Earnhardt Jr., who pushed Jimmie Johnson to the win, didn’t even finish second. That is how incredibly tight these restrictor-plate races have become.
The two-car deal just opens us up to some really new and exciting possibilities. Would David Ragan have won the July race at Daytona last year if it weren’t for the two-car tandem? What about Dave Blaney and how well he ran? It just shows that if you can get hooked up with the right guy, then the unexpected can happen to shock everyone. That’s exciting because the unknown of what might happen keeps you on the edge of your seat or, if you are in the grandstand, you don’t even use your seat.
I like all that and I give the two-car draft a lot of the credit for the exciting finishes we had at the restrictor-plate tracks last year. NASCAR polled fans after a race, which I would never do. If your guy did well, then of course you like that style of racing. If your guy struggled all day or didn’t finish well, then you will blame it on something and that something became the two-car draft.
I talk with and hear from a lot of fans. The message I come away with is a lot of fans actually like the two-car draft. To be fair, there is no gray area for the ones that don’t like it because they are very vocal that they hate it. I can appreciate that. For me, when you can get two guys hooked up and they can run so much faster than anyone else, it’s just fascinating to watch.
Like I had mentioned in another recent story, by the time we got to Talladega, the drivers and crew chiefs had taken it to yet another level. These drivers would have 15 to 20 other drivers programmed into their radios and would talk to them during the race. To me, that got way out of control and I totally agree with NASCAR addressing it.
You shouldn’t be allowed to talk to the other competitors. I can agree with being able to talk to your teammates if you are in a multi-team organization. However, this stuff of making deals with everyone on the racetrack is ridiculous. That is orchestrated racing. We do not want orchestrated racing. Jeff Gordon would have never been mad at Trevor Bayne at Talladega if he couldn’t talk to Trevor as the race wound down.
You also saw, again by the time we got to Talladega, rule changes handed down by NASCAR in an attempt to break up these cars from running behind each other all race long. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. So things basically stayed the same for the rest of the season.
However, as we get closer to January testing, NASCAR has come up with a whole bevy of ideas in an attempt to break up the two-car tandems. I just think it is a mistake. Now they are going to change the cooling by making the opening and the radiator smaller. I am not a fan of that. I think it will once again lead to unintended consequences.
Also don’t lose sight of the fact that in addition to that, our sport has switched over to fuel injection for the very first time. We haven’t raced it one time yet. So we are going to show up at the biggest race of our season with a new engine package. That’s simply not an easy transition for these teams. It’s a big huge change and these engine guys know it. Again, there might be some unintended consequences there as well.
As those famous late-night TV commercials are famous for saying, “but wait there’s more!” The rear springs are going to be softened up. They’re going to change the rear spoiler by shortening it up. There will also be a change in the restrictor plate.
Collectively these are dramatic changes from how we have ever raced. From setup to aero to the engine packages, this is a lot to throw at these teams and expect them to figure it all out in a three-day test at Daytona. The upside, as I see it, is that at least there will be time to change things before we get back there in mid-February for SpeedWeeks.
So as you can see, there is a lot on the table and a lot that needs to be sorted through. So again, as Hall and Oates sing, “We lost what we had, that’s why it hurt so bad.” These teams have a lot to do and a short time to get it done.
We all might have thought 2011 was unbelievable, but I think we are going to knock it out of the park in 2012. That’s why I am chomping at the bit. I can’t wait to see what we learn next week with testing at Daytona.
Following that, I can’t wait to be up in the TV booth for our NASCAR on FOX broadcast on Feb. 26 – oh yes, another change as our season starts a week later this year – and holler “Boogity Boogity Boogity – Let’s go racin’ girls and boys!”
