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The Best Seat at the Track, The Best View on the Net!
May 20, 2015
Volume IX, Edition LXXIX
In addition, France will announce the winner of the Landmark Award from these candidates:
Wednesday's TV Schedule can be found in Couch Potato Tuesday here.
by the Frontstretch Staff
Notably, Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet was not assessed any penalties after his potential All-Star Race violations at Charlotte. Read more
Thomas Davis and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Spend Time at Charlotte Motor Speedway
Today's Featured Commentary
NASCAR's policies can be seen as a double-edged sword, of sorts. It all has to do with the idea of "clean" air.
One aspect of this issue stems from the sanctioning body's "green" initiative. Automobile racing, in general, has been pilloried by the environmental community for its wanton consumption of natural resources. The criticism dates back to the oil embargoes of the 1970s and NASCAR's pledge to reduce fuel use by shortening events and being more resource responsible. Even "Big Bill" France himself led the charge to make the sport more environmentally friendly back then.
Fast forward to 2015, and today we hear how NASCAR plants ten trees every time a green flag is thrown during a race. Reforestation is a most noble pursuit that not only provides our planet with increased filtration of our oxygen supply, but also serves as a very public example of NASCAR's commitment to improving our environment.
Dare I suggest, however, that the sanctioning body ignores the thousands of vehicles that sit idling in what seem to be endless traffic snarls before and after events? For the sake of brevity, let's just pretend that the only environmental harm comes from the 43 stock cars turning laps on race day.
Therein lies the next and most competitively-relevant chapter of the story: the dilemma teams face regarding the new rules package and the dependence on finding clean air of another sort in order to outrun 42 other cars any given weekend.
NASCAR can plant as many saplings as it wants, whenever it wants, but the real "clean air" in question involves that which flows over the body of a stock car – especially a stock car running at the front. As we saw at Charlotte this past weekend, it's clean air and the car at the head of the pack that often enjoys a distinct (and often insurmountable) advantage.
We saw it with Clint Bowyer's Showdown win. We saw it again with Denny Hamlin's All-Star Race victory. Kevin Harvick managed to run Hamlin down, challenging for the lead in the final laps of that event, but all it took for Denny to seal the deal was to change lines and upset the air surrounding Harvick's Chevrolet. Harvick developed a wicked push and wound up second; Hamlin wound up with the oversized check.
We've seen it too many times in recent NASCAR history: the car that takes the lead with a handful of laps to go tends to hold said lead and win the race. Others may get fairly close, and some may take a shot or two at the leader as the laps wind down. However, it's the driver in clean air who typically – more often than not – makes a post-race trip to Victory Lane.
It all sounds so simple, doesn't it? If you want to win, you get up front and hang on until the end. That's the cardinal rule of racing, is it not? On one hand, it is. But on the other, shouldn't there be a realistic opportunity for the second or third-place driver to have a shot at stealing the victory? Shouldn't a win come from cars running close, capitalizing on horsepower and handling, with the best one taking the checkered flag first? That sounds right.
The problem is, this new Sprint Cup aero package is all about turbulence. If you're not punching the primary hole through the air, you're getting kicked around in the lead car's wake. Dirty air has always been a factor in NASCAR. Being able to "read" the air was what supposedly made Dale Earnhardt such a force to reckon with on superspeedways during his career. Other drivers seem to possess such skills (Dale Jr. and Michael Waltrip are two who come to mind) but it seems even more evident that the new rules package in use overshadows driver skill. Get the lead with twenty laps to go, and you'll likely go unchallenged.
Single-file racing might result from the new aerodynamics package, but it certainly does little to make Cup events exciting. Talk around the water cooler on Monday morning lent itself to the results of the Camping World Truck race on Friday and the XFINITY race on Sunday afternoon; NASCAR's top division was merely an afterthought. Even the ARCA race at Toledo garnered more attention, as Todd Gilliland set a new record as the youngest winner in stock car competition. Todd's dad, David, has a knack for reading the air on superspeedways, although maybe that skill doesn't mean much now that the 2015 Cup rules are hindering on-track performance.
But hey…even if the new aero rules turn races into single-file parades to the finish, at least we'll all be able to breathe easier thanks to those newly-planted trees.
As we've learned from NASCAR's policies: it's all about clean air.
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TODAY AT FRONTSTRETCH:
Tuesday's Answer:
Q: Johnny Benson's 1995 championship season in the Busch Series was one of consistency. He only won two races, including a swan song for the Chevrolet Lumina at Hickory. However, the Red Dog 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway represented one of the biggest speed bumps of Benson's season. What happened?
COMING TOMORROW
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