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Pastimes : NASCAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vision21 who wrote (503)	8/8/2000 7:55:00 PM
From: arno	Respond to of 6952

That pretty well sums it up. NASCAR better get on top of these recent issues real quick, or I feel we're seeing the beginning of the end. Boring races and crappy coverage are becoming the norm. Short and medium tracks along with TNN are where it's at. Here's an interesting story: INDIANAPOLIS -- The Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 share more than the distinction of being the two biggest races on the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. In addition to being the richest stock car races in the world, both have become the most boring. Following Saturday's Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the sanctioning body faces the difficult task of making its cars more racy or face the very real possibility of losing fans to other pastimes. There were only nine lead changes during the Brickyard 400, including one made by Bobby Labonte with 15 laps to go that propelled him to a victory worth $831,225. At least one person got his money's worth. Of the nine lead changes, only four came on the track under racing conditions. The other five came as cars made pit stops. The only other race with as few as nine lead changes was the season-opening Daytona 500. The design of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway does not lend itself to good racing for the stock car series. It's the flattest track -- each corner is banked just 9.25 degrees -- and all four turns have sharp 90-degree angles. Getting a 3,400-pound stock car going 200 mph down either straightaway takes a lot of work to get turned. The design of the cars used on the Winston Cup Series also doesn't lend itself to good racing at Indianapolis or most other superspeedways, especially the the Daytona International Speedway. Cars have been over-designed to resemble a Formula One car with fenders. The areodynamic bubble around each car is so fickle, cars become dangerously temperamental when another car invades its space. In racing vernacular, it's called an ``aero-push'' or ``tight.'' Regardless of what it's called, it makes for bad racing. ``This is a tough race track to pass on,'' Labonte said. ``It always has been (since the Brickyard 400 was added to the schedule in 1994).'' ``There never has been a good Winston Cup race here,'' said driver Kyle Petty. The speedway itself and local fans make the Brickyard 400 a special racing weekend. Not only is the track dripping with history, but also the local fans are the most appreciative on the entire circuit. More than 320,000 fans bought a seat for Saturday's main event, and in return, the stock car series kept them there. As one veteran reporter said, ``NASCAR painted the town, then the fans watched it dry.'' Rusty Wallace led 110 of 160 laps -- most with Labonte laboriously trailing in second by just a few inches. Wallace drove too hard into the third turn on the 144th lap and his car washed five feet wide of the bottom groove. That was the only chance Labonte had, and he took it. ``I saw him miss his mark, so I gassed it and went,'' Labonte said. ``I didn't think I was ever going to get around (Wallace's) blue car. It was blue, blue, blue, blue.'' Once Labonte made the pass, Wallace suddenly experienced the same trouble as all the other cars in traffic. His car wouldn't turn. ``It just seems like we're struggling harder with it this year for some reason,'' Wallace said of the inability to get sufficient downforce to make the car turn. ``You need air to push down on the front of the car to help it turn. If something is blocking that air, you don't get the downforce to make the car turn properly.'' Bill Elliott, who finished third, said it was easy to catch cars in traffic, but impossible to get around them. ``You can catch somebody five-tenths of a second a lap,'' he said. ``But once you catch them, you can't pass. The faster you run, the harder it gets.'' The same was true earlier this year at Daytona. Cars followed each other in another listless drone of parade racing. The same fender-bending, bumper-to-bumper racing that made the NASCAR Winston Cup Series so popular has been replaced with follow-the-leader racing. ``It's hard to pass -- harder than ever in Winston Cup,'' said Tony Stewart, who also has IndyCar experience at the Brickyard. ``It's getting more like IndyCars because when you get within four or five car lengths of somebody, it takes your air away and it's really difficult to pass them unless you're a lot faster than they are.'' Fans apparently don't care about the excuses. They're finding other things to do. Television ratings are down 4 percent for the year. Ticket scalpers said interest in this year's Brickyard 400 was lukewarm, at best. ``I don't have the answers,'' said driver Darrell Waltrip. ``I know these cars aren't any fun to drive anymore. You can't pass; you can't race.''