#77 - Controversy... Let It Rage - Part 2
(Editor’s Note) In 1997
- 1998, Matt McLaughlin penned a special Anthology of historical pieces in
honor of the 50th Anniversary of NASCAR entitled "50 Years of NASCAR
Racing." Matt has entrusted the entire collection, minus one or two that
were misfiled back then and cannot be salvaged, to my tender, loving care.
As NASCAR turns 70, the
Anthology itself will celebrate a 20th anniversary through 2018, and will run
again here on Race Fans Forever. As before, there is no record of which pieces
came first, so it will appear in the sequence presented earlier. Please, sit
back and enjoy as you take a journey back through the pages of history and
perhaps relive a memory or two.
As always, many thanks
to Matt, and God bless you my friend. ~PattyKay
This is installment two of a look back at some of the
controversies that have become a part of NASCAR history, and the sometimes
bizarre ways that the sanctioning body handled them. Strap in, throw the
rulebook out the window, and enjoy.
Bumblegate-
Tragedy struck the NASCAR community during the running of the 1990 season
finale held at Atlanta. In those days there were no pit road speed limits, and
while roaring into the pits, Ricky Rudd hit some oil, lost control and slammed
into the side of Bill Elliott's car parked in its pit stall. Tragically,
Elliott crew member Mike Ritch was crushed and killed as he was working at
changing a tire.
There had been several close calls in the pits prior
to that tragedy, and obviously NASCAR needed to do something to protect the pit
crews. Eventually the sanctioning body adopted the pit road speed limits that
are in use to this day, but before adopting that idea they tried some other
unworkable solutions.
The first attempt at a rules change for pit safety was
to ban changing tires during caution periods. That didn't work so well. Drivers
stayed out on badly worn tires unwilling to give up track position to pit under
green late in the race, and numerous wrecks followed as a result.
At Bristol, NASCAR tried something new. Cars were
designated either "even" or "odd" based on their qualifying
position. (For example the pole winner and 3rd place qualifier were
"odd" cars, and the 2 and 4th place qualifiers were "even"
cars) A colored sticker on the windshield helped NASCAR officials recall who
was in which group. The rules allowed the "odd" cars to pit under
caution and take on new tires on one lap and the "even" cars to pit
the next. When lining up for the restart, the "odd" cars would line
up in their running order on the inside lane, while the "even" cars
lined up on the outside to take the green.
It was a bit hard to figure out, and in practice it
worked very poorly. As it turned out, all the drivers who were contending for
the win for most of the race just happened to have qualified in positions that
designated them "even" cars. All the lead drivers save for Rusty
Wallace, that is.
Rusty led early, but an equalized tire sent him into
the pits for an unscheduled stop and dropped him two laps off the pace. But
coming back to green after each caution, and there were 19 of them that day,
Rusty found himself sitting in the catbird seat, restarting the race on the
preferred inside groove at the front of the pack, and able to drive hard into
turn one to bypass the leader, then keep ahead of that leader until the next
caution period to make up a lap under yellow.
Wallace had made his way back to 7th when a caution
flew on the 477th lap of the race. Though he was in seventh position, Rusty was
once again the lead car on that preferred inside line, allowed to pass the
drivers in 2n through 6th position under caution as they lined up in the
outside groove. When the green flag dropped Rusty outdrove Ernie Irvan into the
first corner to assume the lead and never looked back. Irvan did make a race of
it, but Rusty held Ernie off by a foot at the checkers. Even Rusty didn't claim
he could have won the race without the unexpected help from the new rules, but
as he correctly pointed out, he hadn't made up the rules, he
had just abided by them. Needless to say the rule was unceremoniously dropped
after that race, and pit road speed limits were adopted for the next race on
the schedule at North Wilkesboro.
As the footnote to the great "Pit Road Rules Mess
of 91" there is a charming but apocryphal story that occasionally makes
the rounds, that a little girl waited patiently to see Bill France walk by,
tugged on his pants legs, and asked "Mr. France why don't you just have a
speed limit on pit road like they have on the highway?" and the rest was
history. Charming, but not true. The person who finally convince France to
adopt the pit road speed limits was our old buddy Junior Johnson, who had been
advocating those speed limits for years as a safety issue. If any of you have
ever confused Junior Johnson with a cute little girl, please see your local eye
care specialist quickly for corrective lenses….and have someone else drive you
there.
Spacergate.
- A frigid day in Richmond, the second race of the 1990 season, was to have a
chilling effect on one driver's chances for that year's Winston Cup
championship.
Mark Martin won that race thanks to a brilliant pit
stop decision by Robin Pemberton, then Mark's crew chief, during the final
caution period. While all the other lead lap cars opted to go with four tires,
Pemberton ordered a two tire stop to get Mark some positions out on the track.
The strategy worked so well Mark took the lead under that caution flag and went
on to beat his arch rival for that year's title, Dale Earnhardt by three
seconds.
But even while Mark was basking in the glow of victory
lane, chilling news worse than the Richmond weather was emerging from the
inspection barn. NASCAR had discovered the spacer plate that goes between the
carburetor and intake manifold of a race car engine was one half an inch too
thick. In actuality that spacer would have been legal had it been welded to the
intake manifold, rather than slipped over the carb studs, but somehow that had
been overlooked back at the shop. Pemberton protested rules instituted that
year had allowed teams to legally lower the engines in their cars one inch. In
order to raise the air cleaner back to a height it could take advantage of the
cowl induction effect, he needed a little bit more spacer.
While the half inch spacer may seem a less severe
rules infraction than an oversize engine and illegally mounted tires, Martin
and the Roush team were fined $40,000, more than Petty had paid for his
misdeeds. More importantly, NASCAR stripped Martin of 46 valuable Winston Cup
points, to give him the total he would have received had he been the last car
to finish on the lead lap.
Still it was early in the season, and there were still
27 races to run. Mark had a fine year and scored three wins and 23 top ten
finishes in 29 events. Unfortunately for Mark, Dale Earnhardt also had a great
year. When the final points total was tallied at the end of the year, Earnhardt
had edged out Martin by a mere 26 points to take the championship. Those 46
points lost at Richmond had decided the outcome of the race. How much did Mark
miss winning the Winston Cup by? Oh, about half an inch.
Richmondgate-
Naturally, NASCAR is faced with a difficult decision as what to do when a car
is found to be illegal after a race, but if in pre-race inspection a car fails
tech the solution should be fairly simple, no? The team either brings the car
into compliance with the rules, or they go home, logic would say. Not always,
as it turns out.
At the spring event at Richmond in 1971, some big name
drivers were found to have big time illegal modifications to their cars.
Richard Petty was found to have the engine set too far back to the rear in his
car from the factory location, and the wheelbase (Distance between the center
of the front and rear wheels) had been altered as well, which was strictly
against the rules. The cars of Benny Parsons and James Hylton were caught with
similar illegal modifications. Curiously, Bobby Allison had missed technical
inspection and qualifying, after being warned of the crackdown. Qualifying took
place and the posted 25-car field was filled with Dave Marcis
taking the pole.
Recall NASCAR racing in those days was very different
than today's racing. The sport was still struggling to survive after the recent
pullout of the factories, whose bushels of money had been the mother's milk of
the sport. Also races didn't always, or even usually, sell out in those days.
You could walk up to the ticket window at just about any track on the day of
the event and purchase a good seat. With some of NASCAR's biggest names,
including Allison and Petty, not in the race, Richmond owner and promoter Paul
Sawyer feared he was going to take a bath at the turnstiles; that could
possibly shut down his track.
Sawyer sat down with NASCAR, and in an unprecedented
move, it was decided that the four drivers who had failed tech inspection could
start at the back of the field which would be expanded to thirty cars for the
race. All they needed to do was make their cars legal to gain entry to the
race.
You might think that Richard Petty would have hollered
"Hoo Ray for me!" and hurried off to the
shop at Level Cross to get a legal car. Instead, he had to awkwardly admit that
maybe there weren't any cars back home that would pass tech either. Allison
admitted the same. There was another meeting between Sawyer and NASCAR and it
was decided the illegal cars could run anyway, but they would need to have a
smaller restrictor plate to cut down on their horsepower. In the interim a post
qualifying inspection revealed the gas tank in Bobby Isaac's K and K Dodge was
positioned a bit low according to the rules. While that was a much more minor
rules infraction Isaac and the 71 team were told they had to run the little
restrictor plate too.
The little restrictor plates turned out to be a case
of "too little too late." Richard Petty charged from the back of the
field and dominated the race, beating Bobby Isaac by two laps. In fact, all
four of the top finishers were cars that had been found to be illegal before
the race started, and three of them, Petty, Allison and Parsons, hadn't even
qualified for the event.
Fifth place went to Dave Marcis,
the pole winner, in a Dodge he owned himself. Dave was a mere ten laps off the
blistering pace Petty set. A clearly frustrated Marcis
told a reporter in a post-race interview he wanted to head over to the
inspection barn, to see if by chance, NASCAR had found out Richard's car was
illegal.
Message in a Bottle- So what happens to a driver who
doesn't drive for Junior Johnson or Petty Enterprises, and gets caught
cheating? Look at the rotten day D.K. Ulrich had at the 1978 Southern 500.
Ulrich was one of NASCAR's legendary independents who kept showing up week
after week, and plugging away, though he was badly outgunned by the drivers
with big name sponsors, with one top five finish to show for 273 starts in the
Winston Cup series.
That day at Darlington Ulrich was already laps down
when Grant Adcox, who died a decade later racing at
Atlanta, lost control and slammed the wall. Adcox's
machine came off the wall in D.K.'s path and the impact was horrendous, tearing
away most of the right side sheet metal of the only race car Ulrich owned. He
was removed from the car unconscious, but fortunately was not critically injured,
though he spent days in the hospital bruised and cut from head to foot. More
bad news followed, while DK was still in the hospital. NASCAR had inspected the
car, and with the sheet metal torn away, found a nitrous oxide bottle in the
space above the rear wheel well, behind the quarter panel. Ulrich was fined
$2000 and suspended from competition for the rest of the season. Sometimes the
rules do apply.
Bananagate-
Some of the above incidents may seem a bit bizarre but in NASCAR history there
has never been any car quite as blatantly illegal as "The Yellow
Banana" owned by (you guessed it….) Junior Johnson. The fact any car owner
would have the nerve to show up at the track with such an obviously illegal car
is baffling. The fact NASCAR decided it was legal and let it race anyway defies
belief. A car NASCAR knew wasn't legal was not only allowed to race, but begged
to race.
A little background is in order. NASCAR had two rough
years in 1965 and 1966 that threatened the sanctioning body's very existence (See
the Speedworld History articles, Chrysler Plays Hard
Ball, and Ford Strikes Out, for more details.) In 1965 Chrysler pulled its
teams, including that of defending champion Richard Petty, from NASCAR
competition, after the infamous Hemi engine ban. Fords dominated that season,
and the fans stayed away in droves. In 1966, NASCAR allowed the Hemis is
certain body styles, but refused the Ford 427 SOHC engine's use in sanctioned
events. Early in the 1966 season Ford started a boycott of its own, and once again
the defending champion, Ned Jarrett, was removed from the series. Even worse,
track promoters were angry over bad ticket sales and beginning to discuss
sanctioning races put on by NASCAR's rival stock car racing league, USAC.
NASCAR and Bill France sensed some dissension in the
ranks of the Ford drivers, who were tired of politics and just wanted to go
racing. None of those drivers was willing to be first to break ranks and bite
the hand that fed them, the Ford Motor Company and the huge amount of money it
spent on racing.
Junior Johnson was the first big-name owner to risk
the wrath of the company and brought a Ford to the Atlanta race in August of
that year. Well it was sort of a Ford, and sort of a space ship. It certainly
didn't resemble any car Ford had ever manufactured. (Maybe they should have
called it a Taurus, because saying it was a Galaxie was pure bull.) The roof
had been lowered over three inches and narrowed as well. The car sat so low the
top of the front rims were about even with the sheet metal. The windshield was
laid back about 20 degrees from stock, another aerodynamic concession. The
entire rear end of the car, from the rear window backwards was bent up at an
angle to turn the trunk lid into a huge spoiler. Certainly no Ford owner,
however hopelessly ignorant about cars, was going to look at that yellow thing
in the garage area at Atlanta and say it was the same sort of car they parked
in the driveway at night. A reasonably intelligent 6 year old could have told
that car was all wrong at 20 paces. If they'd parked a stock Ford next the
Yellow Banana a blind man could have figured out something was fishy in under
five seconds. NASCAR's careful team of inspectors looked over the car, said it
looked all right to them, and declared it legal, even while other competitors
howled in anguish and pointed out the areas the car didn't meet specification.
Why? Because that car had a blue Ford oval on the
grill, and better yet it was to be driven by Fred Lorenzen, one of the most
popular drivers of that era, second, perhaps only to Richard Petty.
Even more baffling was NASCAR strictly enforced the
rules on some other cars, failing the Cotton Owens Dodge driven by then points leader David Pearson for a device that allowed Pearson
to lower the car an inch during the race. Owens pulled his car from the event
in protest.
Lorenzen and his space ship qualified third and led
the race early. A blown tire put Fred into the wall about the midpoint of the
race and he wound up 23rd in the final running order. Still NASCAR's allowing
the Yellow Banana to race had served its purpose. Other Ford teams announced
they were going to defy the boycott too. Ford had seen all the applause and
attention Fred and his fast Ford had earned, and threw in the towel. The
Boycott was all but over.
NASCAR thanked Junior for his help, then politely
asked he never bring that particular car to the track again, warning it would
not pass inspection. Somewhere during the course of the race, perhaps NASCAR
noticed it did look a little peculiar, I suppose. Though it only raced one
time, Junior Johnson's Yellow Banana remains the most controversial car ever to
run in a NASCAR event, a legacy I bet old Junior is pretty damn proud of.
*Matt can no longer
field comments or email at Race Fans Forever. If you have comments or
questions, please leave them below and I’ll do my best to supply answers.
~PattyKay Lilley, Senior Editor.