Winston-Salem Journal from Winston-Salem, North Carolina • 45

AUTO RACING WINSTON SALEM JOURNAL Sunday October 15 2000 PAGCSJ AP PHOTO A member of Jeff Gordon's pit crew rolls away a blown tire jT O1j I i iS3k 1 iUs2Sal Marlin predicting numerous wrecks at Talladega today By Mike Mulhern JOURNAL REPORTER TALLADEGA Ala Sterling Marlin who knows a thing or two about running Dayto na and Talladega only needed a few' laps yesterday morning to fig ure out the line for Winston 500: going to wreck like Pigs they wreck going to be a miracle Man this is just prac tice and got some guys who think the last lap of the race the way chopping you off Me and (Bill) Elliott and (Ken) Schrader were just sitting here talk ing and w'e all agree that going to wreck like pigs at some point in the race and think ing the best strategy might be to get a couple of us together and just run our own race Get a half lap behind and stay out of the big wreck Be cause going to After that raucous morning prac tice session some drivers com plained so fervently that Mike Hel ton NASCAR's senior vice presi dent and chief operating officer abruptly pulled the plug on a big part of this Daytona 500 experi ment by changing engine rules for this afternoon's Winston 500 That led to an afternoon of chaos with steaming car owners and crew chiefs many so upset at the sur prising change of direction by the sanctioning body that they were close to speechless Last week crisis de jour was tires this week restric tor plate engines and of clo on the track Bobby Labonte trying to win the Winston Cup championship said he was upset at the new road blocks Labonte posted the quick est lap in morning practice at id most 199 mph NASCAR had al ready saddled Pontiac with two more inches of rear spoil er than Dale Earnhardt's Chevrolet which had Pontiac teams chafing already about such a late season change in the middle of a title race NASCAR after listening to com plaints by drivers about no throttle response for years now had opened up restrictor plates consid erably for this race adding nearly 100 horsepower balancing that with enough aerodynamic changes including a weird roof spoiler to keep speeds around 190 mph Joe Nemechek put Andy Chevy on the pole at 190 mph on riday But when Labonte hit 198 in prac tice yesterday morning things be gan unraveling Keeping up with changing plate holes this season: At Daytona in ebruary teams ran with holes 2932nds in diameter Rusty Wallace won the chassis dyno test pulling 405 horsepower at the rear wheels NASCAR or dered smaller plates for Talladega in April with 78ths holes cutting about 20 horsepower off the mo tors and stayed with that plate for Daytona in July In August NAS CAR tested much bigger plates with one inch holes which pumped these motors up to 480 horsepow er Then late yesterday NASCAR issued smaller plates with 1516ths holes cutting about 40 horsepower was happening was the drivers had so much horsepower when they'd run up on somebody they hardly stop in time and even if you could the guy be hind you wfas going to run into crew chief Robin Pemberton said they just took some pow er away But we still know if tliat's going to work in the they ran 198 this morn ing they decided to slow down but that blows all of our engine development and testing car owner Richard Childress said you change the size of a plate you change manifolds car buretors heads evqjything Our I I Winston 500 Today's starting lineup: 1 DRIVER CAR SPEED 1 Joe Nemechek Chevy 190279 2 Bill Elliott 1 ord 190045 3 Dale Earnhardt JrChevy 189391 4 Jerry Nadeau Chevy 188947 5 Tony Stewart 1 Pontiac 188827 6 Bobby Labonte Pontiac 188738 7 Kenny Wallace Chevy 188463 8 Jeff Gordon Chevy 188441 9 Dave Marcis Chevy 188341 10 Steve Park Chevy 188008 11 Ricky Rudd ord 187956 12 Dale Jarrett ord 187746 13 Stacy Compton ord 187342 14 Ken Schrader Pontiac 187339 15 John Andretti Pontiac 187317 16 Kevin Lepage ord 186918 17 Terry Labonte Chevy 186860 18 Michael Waltrip Chevy 186805 19 Bobby Hamilton Chevy 186805 20 Dale Earnhardt Chevy 186801 21 Ward Burton Pontiac 186681 22 Jimmy Spencer ord 186521 23 Johnny Benson Pontiac 186347 24 Mike Skinner Chevy 186162 25 Elliott Sadler ord 186079 26 Ricky Craven Chevy 186325 27 Mark Martin ord 186065 28 Rich Bickle Chevy 186036 29 Rick Mast Pontiac 186007 30 Ted Musgrave Chevy 186000 "i 31 Kyle Petty Pontiac 185815 32 Sterling Marlin Chevy 185754 33 Dave Blaney Pontiac 185704 34 Darrell Waltrip ord 185668 35 Scott Pruett ord 185643 36 Matt Kenseth ord 185323 37 Jeff Burton ord Prov 38 Rusty Wallace ord Prov 39 Chad Little ord Prov 40 Jeremy Mayfield ord Prov 41 Robert Pressley ord Prov 42 Brett Bodine ord Prov 43 Mike Bliss Pontiac Prov engine shop worked hundreds of hours developing this for a one inch plate and now out the window And this plays into some hands the ones who do enough work It's giving them a free ride" know who it favors but not going to change the drivers going four Dale Earnhardt said got the cars so out of whack right now they know what to Darrell Waltrip said change something and may be that will be better called trial and error and this a good place to be doing that kind of stuff" don't understand crew chief Greg Zipadelli said told us this is what going to run and this is what going to Daytona with and that all go ing to make it work Then a couple of people complained that we were running too fast that we were drawing up on people too fast Well nobody had any problem at Charlotte last week driving down into the corner at 195 mph What difference does it make here? need to go faster sure but we all spent a lot of time and money preparing for this race and for them to change the rules right now is really unfair to the teams that made the Perhaps the angriest man in the garage was Andy Petree who owns Joe cars Petree was even angrier than Nemechek people who missed the boat are getting a free ride Petree said the people who were committed to this change and who spent a lot of time and money on it are getting screwed They invite me to the test at Daytona and they ask me a thing to can they say these are the Daytona 500 rules when they don't even know if these are going to be the rules Jimmy Makar crew chief wasn't happy at all with NAS sudden pre race rules change: want acceleration one day and then they want it the next day They know what they want obviously They ought to let run as fast as they want to around here and those who want to run fast can run fast and those who don't Emotions running high as drivers agree disagree with restrictor plate rules change CONTROVERSY REIGNS TALLADEGA Ala The death of Tony Roper at Texas Motor Speedway coupled with a wild scary practice session here yesterday morning the first 43 car test of NAS proposed new Daytona 500 rules led to a surprising unplanned and rather emotional meeting yesterday afternoon to discuss the latest stock car racing crisis And Mike Helton responded with a quick rules change cutting engine restrictor plates back to 1516ths of an inch holes cut ting about 40 horsepower off the engines knocking them back to about 440 horsepower still about 50 more horsepower than at plate tracks earlier this year It was one of the wilder days of the season and the primary' emotion in the garage was anger Mark Martin accused NASCAR of being more interested in boosting TV ratings than in the safety of its drivers He said it was time for officials to go back to the drawing board for new Daytona rules Teammate Jeff Burton said the big wreck is coming today regardless of contro versial changes going to have the big wreck" Burton said is the problem not the race cars You put 43 cars together in one big pack and ask everybody not to make a mistake The only way to fix it is a major major change But we had it that way at Daytona we had it where it was safer and everybody hated it the fans and the media The only people who liked it were the drivers So now' we gel to watch four wide racing and a bunch of wrecks The drivers like it but the fans get to enjoy it I think an unsafe way to race But when we raced safe at Daytona everybody com plained the racing was boring So I guess we have to do it dangerously it might have looked wilder this morn ing it might have looked like we were more out of control because of the faster rate of closure but out of control every time we come here Every time we come here This is a bad race track What we need to do is keep plates on them so we go over 190 or 195 mph put a little bitty spoiler on it and make them drive bad Then the best handling car wins But nobody wants to do that Daytona was a boring race? We had a bunch of lead changes and a bunch of racing going on But it like Talladega So this is all about making Daytona like Talladega and as far as concerned I make anything like Talladega Atlanta Texas and Talladega are the most dangerous race tracks on the pretty sure this is what they wanted" Martin said criticizing the tight pack racing under both of sets of rules I care w'hat plate you put on I watched the test at Daytona and I talked to the drivers and they all told me with these rules there would be a lot more wrecks So different here? Instead of 20 drivers got 43 this is what they wanted for TV ratings and for fans The change in plates doesn't mean any thing That's just a func tion of speed Who cares how much it slows us down? It doesn't matter The aerodynamic changes means 43 cars can all pass at the same time And we knew that in August at the test If they want that why did they put it in the ruies? or TV ratings TV ratings and the fans outweigh what w'e drivers feel is a reasonable race out on the track Daytona in August we knew what was going to happen here important? If TV ratings are the most important thing then this gets an Safety has been a myor issue for Burton this season and the pain of adding Roper's name to list of killed in action was clear in his face Roper died of neck Burton said turning his head around and pointing to the base of his skull we have to change a cam shaft So we have to take one out and put another in And maybe work all night I care And I think my guys would care if we were doing something to ultimately make things safer ask a guy at 1:30 pm on a Saturday afternoon to change a restrictor plate but to know going to be safer well I have any sympathy for the guys who are going to com new safer seat underwent its initial crash testing five days ago and he said it went well And he said it might have saved Roper death is the perfect ex ample of everything going wrong that could go wrong the angle at which he Burton said have the same injury that Kenny Irwin and Adam Petty had And those injuries are preventable Racing is dangerous but we can lower the risk by having a better seat and a better head and neck restraint system "We hoped the new seat would be perfect off the bat but it but we still learned a lot We don't have a second test scheduled yet but there will be one Then we should go to the true seat and test it not a prototype then w'e can go into The specific issue here has been the of With drivers having an extra 100' horsepower under their feet they found them selves sucking up in the draft at a remarkably fast pace creating dangerous situations That was most notable when Bobby Labonte dropped back to launch a run and by the time Mike Mulhern he sailed to the front he had been officially clocked at 198475 mph unofficially hitting 207 mph on the straight The closure rates have scared the drivers the unexpected speeds scared NASCAR "I think if left the big plates on have gotten in hot water Sunday" Jimmy Spen cer said just couldn't judge how fast you were closing on people sometimes It was like can't believe this I believe how' fast I caught this car' And I think we all agreed slow' the cars down a couple miles an hour and give us a little more time to acjjust "You saw what was going on out there this morning It pleasurable You race that way If you'd have dropped the green flag we'd have had a helluva wreck We all knew' could get in trouble So some drivers suggested a smaller plate "They thought go the same speed (1 99 mph) and be able to pass easier Well we were But they anticipate we could catch anoth er car that fast and we didn't either catch a car one time and it was OK But the next time it was like cow what's going on It was like dealing with a snake: you getting closer and closer and then suddenly it strikes "So I don't think these are going to be the Daytona 500 At one point in the meeting Rusty Wallace and Spencer got into an argument over aggressive driving styles with Wallace suggest ing NASCAR draw lines on the track as out of( bounds and enforce a five lap penalty for driv ing over those lines At that point Spencer stormed out of the meeting but later returned Then Ricky Craven' stood up to talk about his wild crash here a years ago and say want to he able to walk out? of this track after the race and climb into my plane and fly At the end of the unprecedented session'1' Helton ordered new smaller restrictor plates and handed out plates personally to the drivers? The move came so swiftly that NASCAR even have enough of the plates to go around and gave some teams even smaller plates so one point drivers had three different sized plates on the track Not everyone was happy with lat 5 est rules change particularly Bobby Labonte and teammate Tony Stewart 1 But rankie Stoddard crew chief applauded move: "NASCAR done a job today pat them on the? back They've done something right to slow these things down and make things safer Sun day 4 important to win on Sunday But it's also important to be around to race next Sunday too Tony Roper can't do that fans are never going to see him race again His family will never see him Roper is dead after wreck in Trucks race THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ORT WORTH Texas Tony Roper a Trucks series driver died yesterday hours after a fiery crash in a race at Texas Motor Speedway becoming the third on track fatality this year in NASCAR Roper 35 had a severe neck injury w'hich prevent ed blood from flowing to his brain said Dr John LaNoue a trauma surgeon at Parkland Hospital LaNoue said the injury riday night left Roper without any brain function Roper was unconscious and un responsive when he was pulled out of his truck after the wreck during the 400 where he started 1 5th in a field of 36 Emer gency crews had to cut the roof off his ord to get him out TONY ROPER jjx He had been placed on a venti lator at the hospital where his father Dean Roper a former Mid west short track star was with him when he died appreciate the show of support from the other drivers and teams who came here to be with us last night and this morn Roper said appreciate everybody who helped him along in racing and all the friends he has made as a result was a good little It was the first fatal accident at Texas Motor Speedway which opened in April of 1997 "We are all shaken by the death of Tony Roper" said Eddie Gos sage the track's general manag er join our fans in offering prayerful support to Tony Roper's Adam Petty a NASCAR Busch series driver and Kenny Irwin a Winston Cup racer were killed earlier this year They crashed while practicing at New Hamp shire International Speedway Racing Roundup Weather hampers Indy 300 Ray to sit on pole in Texas JOURNAL WIRE REPORT CART Honda Indy 300: Rain and high wind played havoc with practice yesterday at Surfer's Para dise Australia forcing teams to forego testing before the final quali fying session Gil de erran trying to win the CART edEx drivers' championship with a victory was fastest in riday's opening qualifying session to take the provisional pole Any drivers hoping to catch de erran a rench born Brazilian were thwarted by inclement weather that hit the 2795 mile street circuit Only 1 1 of 25 drivers were able to take to the track in the first half of a 75 minute practice session sched uled four hours before final qualify ing Several drivers were black flagged from the course when wind blew debris on the slick track IRL Excite 500: Scott Good year one of three drivers still in con tention for the Indy Racing League season title will start on the front row today for the season ending race in ort Worth Texas Goodyear had the second best qualifying time yestreday at Texas Motor Speedway with a lap of 214391 mph He starts in the front row alongside Greg Ray the de fending IRL season champ who won the pole at 215352 Points leader Buddy Lazier who needs only to finish 14th or better to win this Northern Light Cup and a $1 million bonus is to start sixth Lazier has an IRL leadmg 258 points 36 more than of Goodyear who got two bonus points for quali fying second Eddie Cheever Jr who will start in the 10th position after a 21 1483 qualifying lap is third in points with 21 7 Car Sales 297 1110 Red f)rum i oimuimem Oct26 28 2000 The Outfit Banks A 2 8500 in Prizes Individual Entries 7500 entry fee Awards Banquet Door Prizes Contact: rank ran Box 448 Avon NC27915 252 995 4171 ffffffinterpa th com DISTRIBUTOR NEEDED Coke Pepsi rito Lay Products $2000 Per Week Potential National Company seeks honest dependable person to service commercial accounts Part imewi 11 expand to full time No Selling No Overhead You must have $15000 to invest now 100 secured Company finances future expansion! 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