Every other race in the season has qual a day or two before. Why a week early?

Steve

Because the 800# gorilla wants to have a reason for the 300 pre-race programs that monopolize the schedule on the NAS, er, SPEED channel. Also, its a way to try and stay visible during the Winter Olympics. It's all about sports marketing- as usual.

It has nothing to do with that. They've been doing it this way for 20+ years before NASCAR was the new American past-time, or at least the new bandwagon. They've just started live televising every practice, qual, race since it got big. You used to have to wait until non-peak times or an ESPN re-cap just like you have to wait for everything else now.

As far as why it's two weeks long, one reason is to have a take a vacation and party, my godfather has been doing it since '80. The other is that it's the biggest race of the season. Don't the other sports channels do the same for the Super Bowl? Yep.

I didn't even know the olympics were taking place until they interrupted coverage of qualifying. I'm watching the Bud Shootout right now...Go #8.

Is that like figure 8 bus racing?

Damn my typing.

Go #24 & #48! Yes, it's been like that for years, nothing new. Uh-oh, as I type, #24's tire is smoking......caution's out!

Push that whine baby behind the wall!

Just as I'm about to comment on how brave the guys in the pits are to put body parts under a car supported by a jack.... McMurray's jack bleeds down and puts the car on asphalt during a tire change.

I didn't hear Gordon doing any whining, but I did hear Carl Edwards doing plenty!

I'm sure somebody(ies) are looking for Kyle Busch right about now...

Did you hear Stewart's comments after the race? Something to the effect of:

~Somebody's going to get killed again out there with this kind of racing. I hope I'm not around when it happens.~

Yeah. He was pretty much trying to be as negativeas he could be about restrictor plate races without getting a call to the NASCAR trailer.

What is it they don't like about the Super Speedway races other than the super speeds? What is the typical top speed they feel is still within their comfort zone? Sorry, I don't follow this stuff at all.



steve

Restrictor plates and aero rules make the cars very dependent on drafting in order to pass. As a result the car are one on top of each other at all times and 2-3 rows wide. Factor in all the place swapping and blocking and you have recipe for big nasty wrecks that cannot be avoided.

The racing sucks and most drivers HATE restrictor plate races. Atlanta is much more fun to watch and about the same speed if not faster IIRC.

Thety are actually faster at tracks like Atlanta/California (smaller speedway) without restrictor plates where they have about 850+ HP (~195-205mph), but they spread out more b/c of the handling differences and HP. At Daytona, you don't have power to pass (~450hp), you have to draft. They don't complain about the speed, it's the speed and the fact that the whole pack is seperated by about 2 seconds and they are all nose-to-tail.

Yeah and its probably going to be Kyle Busch or Jimmie Johnson if they don't calm down out there.

<----for #8

Yeh Kyle Bush was all over the place. Its funny because the pace car(Z06) has more power than the race cars

They complain about the fact that they're bunched up but they're also scared of the 235+ mph that they'd see without the plate. I can't remember if it was last year or the year before, but Rusty did a test at either Daytona or Talledega without the plate and said it was right on the ragged edge all the time and it wouldn't take much to set the car off.

It's a no-win with the current mind set unless you dirty the aero up really bad... like making them into trucks.

One idea I had last year was to put them on a much smaller tire. Pretty much like the difference between (dirt) modifieds and late models. It doesn't matter how much power you make if you can't put it to the ground.

NASCAR considered that a couple years ago, but I can't remember why it wouldn't work.

I think it would be a great idea to just run narrower tires though. I think they could run either unrestricted or with a larger restrictor that way and we'd have racing again.

I remember that. Shouldn't a racecar be pushed almost to the ragged edge all the time? So, if they are on the ragged edge they'd be slowing down, tire wear would matter, and they would spread out a bit....sounds good to me. What about a bigger restricter plate to allow them more HP, but not too much that they go 225mph?

How about they drop all the super speedways and race at a real race track like Road America or Laguna or some other road course. Then it would be interesting to watch and the plates would no longer be needed at all.

A huge difference between the over 200 mph speeds and the under 200 mph speeds is aerodynamics. Cars that ran over 200 without plates were significantly inferior aerodynamically but had enough horsepower to compensate. I think this year is the first year that the pace car will have more HP than the race car (how sad is that...).

I really think they could get rid of the plates and use a short-track body (Bristol or Martinsville), which combined with a 450-cfm carb (roughly half of the current 830 cfm) would provide a large enough "natural" restriction without resorting to using plates. This will also put the car back into the driver's hands. When Earnhardt lost his primary car at Michigan due to a happy hour tangle with Rusty, he had to use a Bristol car as a backup for the race. He would go backwards on the straights, but would eat everybody up in the turns because he had so much downforce.

Is that what these cars have at the rear wheels or would it be that at the flywheel?

Seems like you would need more than that at the flywheel to race at 190 mph.

From what I understand, it's at the flywheel and it's a rough estimate.

Yeah I guess it would have to be since they are comparing that number to the fwhp on the Z06.

I'm interested because I'm still trying to guess my car's top speed with 480 at the flywheel. Some day I'll have the safety equipment in place for a real test at Bonneville Raceway.