Does Speed Make the Speed-Sport More Exciting?
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It’s probably because I just don’t care for racing at
Talladega, but every time NASCAR returns to what - without restrictor plates to
arbitrarily cut speeds - would be its fastest track, my mind wanders to places
where you could enjoy the action at a fraction of the speed.
Ricky Stenhouse
enjoyed his Talladega win a lot more than this writer. He’s OK, but I’ll pass
on ‘Dega.
Ricky Stenhouse averaged 191.547 mph in winning last
spring’s Talladega race, which I didn’t watch (or attend). I did, however, attend
races this year at Lincoln Speedway where, 52 years ago, Dick Hutcherson
averaged 82.607 mph to win the last Grand National/Cup/Monster race ever run on
that ½-mile dirt oval. (“One-half mile” gives the track considerable benefit of
the doubt, by the way.)
This shot isn’t
from Lincoln, but I wish I’d been there the night Hutch won the last Grand
National Race run in New Oxford, Pa.
I can’t claim that Lincoln’s races were more successful
than those at Talladega have been; after all, there were no more Grand National
events there after 1965. Since Hutcherson won by eight laps over second-place
G.C. Spencer, Lincoln’s race probably wasn’t as exciting, either. So why would
I prefer to see that 1965 race on a not-that-special dirt track more than on the
biggest oval track in the U.S.?
For me, I like to be closer to the action, to be able to
see the people driving or crewing the cars; see the tire marks on the side of a
car where it’s rubbed hard against another; see the drama of a spin or wreck
without instantly being caught up in whether it’s “the big one.”
From the infield or
the stands/bleachers, short tracks put you closer to the race.
For me, what’s happening at those slower speeds is
racing, not a clean air/dirty air aerodynamic motorized freak show.
If we can’t have Curtis Turner’s speed bump on the
Charlotte backstretch, or drivers driving with bags over their heads, or three
cars chained together with the driver in front steering and the driver in back
gassing and braking - if we can’t try those and other gimmicks to attract fans
who don’t find traditional racing action worth their money, then why is
Talladega allowed? That is, other than because those reaping the financial
rewards are pretty closely related to those making the rules.
Grump.
This doesn’t really fit into my arguments, but I spent
some time looking up races with extra-slow speeds, so I’m going to tell you
what I found, anyway.
In the very early days of NASCAR GN/Cup racing, race
average speeds dipped down as low as about 40 miles per hour, but you need to
remember that those early years had no tracks smaller than one-half mile,
because there was a separate “Short Track Division” for the smaller ovals,
where the pace might have been slower still. In 1951, a half-mile dirt track at
Rochester, N.Y., recorded an average speed of 40.708 mph. Lee Petty won, but we
don’t know his victory margin.
This is
Martinsville in 1950, not Rochester in ‘51, but the racing speeds were nearly
as slow, and as you can see, the racing was close.
I was intrigued by the 1955 race at Las Vegas Speedway
Park, that one-mile horse track that was a colossal failure - and the builder
was under indictment for embezzling funds raised for the place when he turned
up dead in his motel room. Here, on a one-mile track, winner Norm Nelson
averaged only 44.449 mph for a race that was supposed to have been 200
laps/miles but was called after 111 due to darkness. Apparently, there were
numerous wrecks, too. (The poll speed was nearly 75 mph, but that still seems a
tad slow for a full mile.)
When the Indy Cars raced on the Vegas track, they
averaged 84.818, but neither division returned after its inaugural event, and
the track disappeared after less than a decade.
After the Short Track Division closed up shop, some of
the shorter tracks were added to the Grand National schedule, and the slowest
average speed I could find was for one of those. On October 27, 1957, Buck
Baker won a 250-lap race on the one-third mile dirt Greensboro Fairgrounds
track in North Carolina at an average speed of 38.927.
In 1956, the
Convertible Division averaged only 36.492 mph for this Greensboro race, won by
Bob Welborn, with Glen Wood’s #22 finishing
third. The speed didn’t hold down the
crowd.
But that race barely claimed the “slowest” title, because
less than three months earlier, 14 intrepid racers had taken on a nine-tenths
mile temporary road course at the Kitsap County Airport in Bremerton, Wash.,
and when the excitement was over, Parnelli Jones had
won at a speed of 38.959. I think I’d rather have been at Talladega.
Parnelli Jones won the Kitsap
Airport race, which may have been his first big-time victory. (See more about
this race below.)
For comparison’s sake, the GN circus averaged 39.258 when
Lee Petty won at Bowman Gray Stadium’s one-quarter mile paved oval in 1958, and
the slowest race at Islip, Long Island’s one-fifth mile was 42.428 in 1967. Not
sure what happened on the airport road course, but it couldn’t have been
pretty.
So how do I wrap this all up?
Let’s just say that miles-per-hour and competitive
excitement aren’t necessarily linked directly. I love Lincoln’s “tight”
half-mile, and I love the high-banked quarter-mile dirt track at Path Valley
Speedway, a little more than an hour northwest of me, still in South-central
Pennsylvania. What makes them exciting is that the cars run close together,
pass each other a lot, and don’t have to be backed by cubic dollars to be
successful.
Path Valley
Speedway in/near Spring Run, Pa.
That’s what makes the difference. Aerodynamics, tires,
and dollar bills have taken that away from many Cup tracks (while Talladega
adds the closeness back in by the necessity of drafting, to me, that ain’t the
same thing).
Take away the splitters, spoilers and about 20-30 mph of
speed, and you might get some old-fashioned racing that would get the butts off
the bleachers with excitement. Would somebody at least try that before this
sport dies?
Some years ago I attended a race at Wyalusing Valley
Motorsports Park, on one-fifth mile (measured generously) dirt track sort-of
near Towanda, Pa. (near the Pa./N.Y. line), which was running go-karts and
micro sprints. The track was so small that the micros looked like full-sized cars
on it, and despite the fact that everything was primitive, I had a great time,
even though I’m not a big kart-racing fan. If it had been closer to my house, I
would have returned with enthusiasm. (Sadly, the insurance company covering the
farm on which the track sat forced its closure.)
Action at tiny-but-exciting
(and lamented) Wyalusing Valley.
I won’t watch Talladega Sunday, because I don’t need 200
mph speeds to make racing exciting. Weather permitting, I’ll be at Lincoln
Saturday, and expect to see better racing. I wish it didn’t have to be that
way.
Frank’s Loose Lug Nuts
I found an article about that Kitsap County Airport race,
written back in NASCAR’s relatively recent boom days, when International
Speedway Corporation flirted with building a new track at nearby Bremerton,
Wash.
The 1957 event was part of Seattle’s Seafair
celebration, and it originally had been a sports car race at another airport
closer to the city, but was moved because of traffic congestion problems.
Kitsap County hosted sports car races for three years, drawing smaller but
still profitable crowds, and then the Civil Air Patrol, sponsors of the race,
invited NASCAR in for 1957. Not only was the 14-car turnout disappointing
(30-40 had been expected), but the crowd was only 2,500, well short of the
15,000 for the previous year’s sports car races. The CAP took a financial bath,
the race moved to another airport the next year, and major racing events became
a fond (?) memory at Kitsap County Airport.
According to a story in the Kitsap Sun, a local gas
station operator “sponsored” two of the cars in the NASCAR race by giving each
100 gallons of gasoline, spiked with methanol. The drivers turned up their
noses, saying they had their own secret ingredients for cheating. The doctored
gas ended up in their tow trucks.
While selecting photos for this article, I came across
the one below, showing the 1948 Tucker entered in the Poor Man’s 500 Grand
National race at Canfield, Ohio, Speedway, a race won by Bill Rexford at an
average speed of just over 42 mph. Unfortunately, the Tucker broke an axle
before the race began (see tow truck photo) and finished last.
Joe Merola of Wilkinsburg, Pa.,
drove the car, one of seven GN starts in his “career.” This seems to have been
the Tucker’s only appearance, though.