Thread: Nascar
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Old 02-20-2006, 04:06 AM   #14
Uncle Bob
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Blaine, WA
Posts: 319
Quote:
Originally Posted by prOk
Funny how people stereotype others isn't it I would think a group like this would be a touch more mentally advanced than that! Anyone that thinks it doesn't take driving skill to hold on to a car, much less work to advance your position going 200 mph in the middle of 40 others also doing that speed with the same goals is crazy.. In most other popular forms of racing by the end of lap one the gap from the leader to 2nd place is 3-5 seconds, but in nascar that's the gap from first to last. It definitely takes talent.. and if road racing is the only kind of racing out there for some, consider that when nascar goes to road courses quite a few road racing 'aces' join the field and routinely are beaten by drivers that are quite unfamiliar with it. I'm surprised to see folks here act so snobbish
Indeed. My last few chances of watching F-1 was more of a parade than anything else. Very little lead changes. Daytona had many. To take away the preconceived notions is what I see as odd.
I still watch F-1, but find it nowhere near as exciting as it used to be. I'm talking about years before Senna, too. I remember a young lad, Nikki Lauda. I believe it was he who made the first pit stop in an F-1 race to change tires (something the old moonshine runners figured out the first race). He lost a lap but won the race!
No doubt, F-1 is the pinnacle of open wheel racing, but ask Sterling Moss, or Jim Clarke if they wanted to win the Daytona 500....they salivated at the thought. You just have to be there, at a high banked 2.5 mile oval and you never wonder again is all I can say. The last real great 'unmolested' race there was when Bill Elliot set a pole speed of 210 in 1987. That was going over 235 in the straights. Those cars were literally flying. They came in for fuel and hardly needed tires. With restrictor plates came the freight trains we see now, but there are only really 2 tracks like that, Talladega and Daytona. At Talladega in 1987, Bill Elliott established a world stock-car record when he posted a speed of 212.809 mph. Mark Martin established a 500-mile stock-car record in 1997 when he won the caution-free race with an average speed of 188.354 mph. That's a feat few could match I'm sure......kinda takes away from the "250 miles of cautions" theory as well.
NASCAR races at Sonoma CA and Watkins Glen for road courses, but ovals are by far the most popular. The main reason, I suppose, is that fans (who pay for keeping the tracks open) enjoy these the most. I'd always liked to see Road America and really enjoyed Riverside, CA in it's heyday. The truth is it takes an enormous amount of monies to keep this going. Competition is stiff for tracks to entice a NASCAR race. In Bremerton, WA there is a movement afoot to build a track. The future is uncertain without some guarantees from NASCAR as the cost is so high.

I see many forms of racing today where the cars are slowed down and NASCAR is but one. Look at the changes in F-1 with tires and engine packages in the last few years. Very few lap records are being broken now as a result.

One of the purely unrestricted forms I can go see in the US is drag racing! If it didn't take so long to see just a few moments of racing I could get more enthusiastic. Still, going 326 mph in 4.4 seconds is something hard to imagine. The G Forces alone would cause most folks to pass out. The innovation and complexity of these machines is incredible. The good natured competition and ability to compete and stay friends is admirable as well.
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