Many of you reading today are familiar with the twisting, winding roads in the hills and mountains of the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia, where men like Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner and Raymond Parks lived and plied their trade. Those of you that have not traversed the Southeastern part of our great country are still familiar with the names mentioned... or should be. Trust me; our early heroes were even better on the roads than they were on the ovals and I suspect they would be mightily amused to hear the purists of the Roundy-round circuits proclaim that road racing is “boring.” Heck, it was both lifestyle and livelihood to them.
Of course, I realize that not all road racing has its roots in the south or even in America for that matter, but for today, since the conversation revolves around stock cars, let's keep it at home. I can remember somewhere back in the 1960s when the stockers made their first long haul up to Watkins Glen, about an hour from where I used to live. (Not their first road race, just the first one at the Glen) Actually, it was amusing to see those big heavy cars being tossed from side to side and drivers that were known to be aces on an oval spending an inordinate amount of time in the “kitty litter.”
Obviously, those drivers, many of whom were still children when NASCAR came into being, had come some distance from the moonshine days and the cars were very different from those little pre-war Fords with the huge trunks. Their foray into the Glen didn’t last long that time, but soon they found themselves racing at good ol’ Riverside in southern California, a track I sorely miss. Alas, someone decided that the world needed one more shopping mall.
Ah, but as usual, I digress, and become lost in my own personal preferences. (Senior moment; indulge me) The point I’m trying to make is that I love it when they go racing on the roads, as do many of the drivers. Make no mistake; these are not the drivers of the '60s that were trying something different and finding it somewhat beyond the skills they had at the time. Many of today's drivers are more than capable of racing in other series, where road racing is the norm. How many familiar names did you hear at this year's 24-Hours of Daytona? Road racing presents a chance for the skills of a driver to outshine raw horsepower and for a crew chief to prove his worth by outthinking the competition. We get to see all too little of either on the fast ovals.
I think we can agree that part of the fun of stock car racing is in the diversity of the tracks that host it, something we might be in danger of losing in the not too distant future. Right now, we have races at the two giant Superspeedways, three short tracks of varying configurations, a couple of flat milers (NHMS and Phoenix), one banked mile track in Dover, Pocono, which fits no description even close to the others and to date, we still have one race at our egg-shaped anomaly, Darlington. Then of course, we have the road courses, Sonoma and Watkins Glen. All of the rest bear a striking resemblance to one another.
This race fan wouldn't mind seeing a couple more road races in the mix, definitely to include Road America in Elkhart Wisconsin, probably the most beautiful track in the country. As the Nationwide cars head there this weekend, I admit to feeling pangs of jealousy that the lesser series gets to race there while the Cup cars race on the tighter turns of Sonoma. I'd like both! To double the number of road courses on the schedule would justify the time and expense that teams put forth to field a special car for those races, just as they do for the Superspeedway cars with restricted engines. The schedule contains four race dates at those tracks. Wouldn't it make sense to apply the same logic to the road races? And while I'm wishing, I would definitely love to see one of the road courses, any one, replace any one of the mile-and-a-half cookie cutters in the Chase.
It takes a very talented racer to get the best out of a car that is traversing hills and multi-directional turns; it’s like racing through the mountains of Carolina with a Trooper on your tail, and that Trooper is likely to look a lot like Juan Pablo Montoya, Marcos Ambrose or maybe Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart or Kyle Busch. As I said, today's drivers have learned to race the roads in very respectable style. The game is played differently on a road course and one has to be thinking out of the box right from the green flag in order to take the checkers. I just love trying to second-guess the calls we see made on a road course and they raise my esteem for crew chiefs, which is already very high, to a new level.
We often hear the mantra that NASCAR is a “team sport” and nowhere is that more true than on a road course. The best driver doesn't have a chance of winning without good calls from his crew chief, good performance from his crew and it helps immeasurably to have a transmission specialist that can build one to last the length of the race. Of course, a little luck never hurts either...
Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I hope I've convinced at least a few fans to watch the road race from a new point of view and hopefully with a renewed interest. There is absolutely nothing boring about a road race once you understand the differences between road and oval. As I said earlier, the most fun is trying to outguess various crew chiefs on things such as short-pitting and "counting backwards" as Larry Mac will describe it on Sunday.
The TNT crew does a pretty fair job of calling a road race. Larry Mac was actually a pretty smart crew chief in his younger days. Kyle Petty actually has a road race win to his credit, but it should come with an asterisk. It was a race called for rain during a pit stop cycle at Watkins Glen. NASCAR jumped the gun on that one, called the race official and within minutes the sun came out and it never rained another drop that day. Kyle was not noted for being a road ace. Wally Dallenbach Jr. might be a name unfamiliar to younger viewers. Wally comes from open wheel stock, and his Dad was in charge of Indianapolis Motor Speedway for many years. (General Manager I believe was his official title) Wally Jr. did race in NASCAR for a time, in a Roush Ford, and Wally WAS a road ace, despite not having a win to his credit. In short, don't discount his opinions, as they are probably the right ones.
Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
~PattyKay
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