This is one of those events that I'm of several minds about:
1) This is what keeps people outside the scene interested and taking note - NASCAR absolutely should publicize and play up this moment, it brings a lot of folks to the sport. It was incredibly awesome.
2) A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
3) The best course forward is to leave it alone and legal in this moment, publicize it, but also treat it as the formation of some new rules.
Side note, Nascar 2005, which he referenced as one of his inspirations for this, is one of my favorite gamecube games. I remember picking it up and playing it for hours on end, the soundtrack was awesome, and it didn't feel like an EA cash-grab at the time. Man how times have changed...
Edit: Extra info - the 11 of Hamlin has previously made it into the chase for the champion ship by _intentionally wrecking drivers_ , so by and large a huge part of the fan base believes he got what was coming to him.
> 2) A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
I don't watch Nascar, but as from comments from other places, there is nothing new with it. It has been known and attempted by others now and then [1]. It is a high risk high reward move and this time it turned out good.
If it wasn't regulated so far, I don't think it will be.
I have some family members that are huge fans, so I follow somewhat. It should be noted with your link that Darlington is a much faster and lengthier track than Martinsville. At Darlington, Larson was very close to Hamlin when he initiated the wall ride halfway through the corner - he may have gained a half second or so, not several, like at Martinsville. I see this as more of a Richmond/Martinsville short track strategy. So now that we know it's possible at Martinsville, it'll be great to see what happens next time they visit or on the next short track race.
I personally don't see this happening a lot. I raced motorcycles at the professional level for several years. If someone had continued doing something that gave them a 3 to 5 second advantage on the last lap, the rest of the paddock would have gotten tired of it pretty quickly. Although I think it's a hilarious situation, I would imagine if it continues to happen that the drivers doing it will start to feel pressure from the other drivers.
If it gets to where this is happening all the time, I don't see the series not making a rule against it, but they are probably gladly accepting the needed publicity at this point.
I think you’ll see the defensive line move up the track to block this on exit, which will open up the possibility for someone to get under the defending car, which should make the racing tactics more interesting in the last lap.
This tactic will wear the car out far too much to be used on multiple laps, so it may just get race fans to experience more excitement and interest on the last lap.
Sure, but a driver isn't blocking the guys right behind them. Someone isn't going to win the race from 10 cars back, but anyone three seconds behind the leader can pull it off. From what I saw, a driver would easily be able to pass the driver one to three cars in front. So blocking the outside on exit might work for the guy coming from 5 to 10 spots back, but the leader will lose every time to the guys directly behind. And if the driver directly in front goes to the outside on entry to block, then a dive bomb from the person behind on the inside will work just fine too. I'm not sure why anyone should take the regular line at that point. What's stopping every car in the top 10 from going around the outside bouncing off the wall, especially when there is money on the line?
At the moment I'm looking forward to the last corner/last lap of one of these short track races with a lot of money or championship at stake. I picture it playing out exactly like the first corner in a Forza online multiplayer race. One or two players staying in the race line, two other drivers dive bombing, four others bouncing off the wall on the outside, resulting in a mess of fiberglass, tears, and mad drivers. I just hope a fan in the stands doesn't catch a loose part.
> What's stopping every car in the top 10 from going around the outside bouncing off the wall, especially when there is money on the line?
Nothing at all. Everyone will end up doing it on the last half lap at short tracks and no one will have an advantage, lots of cars will get torn up, and owners will ask NASCAR to stop making them tear up a $250K racecar every short track race.
I also wonder when someone who might normally qualify at the end of the field will do this in qualifying, essentially trading extra repair work on the car for a spot at the front of the field.
Interestingly, this weekend's wall ride had a similar result - a car ahead stayed high, forcing him to slow down and preventing the pass. The difference is that in this case, he had already passed five cars, and passing the sixth was irrelevant in the standings result.
There was the 3" fuel line issue a decade or more ago.
When limiting the size of the fuel cell to x gallons, they neglected to specify the size of the fuel line. More fuel capacity is an advantage late in the race, allowing for the potential to not have to pit for a splash of gas or have to drive as conservatively.
Well, a 3" line has a couple of gallon capacity if it extends the length of the car, and at one point, someone won because of it, and then had it discovered in the technical inspection.
You're thinking of Smokey Yunick, and that's just a taste of his antics
Check out the "reverse torque special" where he reversed the direction of his engine, so the tq pull would naturally turn him in the correct direction for nascar
Or when he modified the roof and raised the floor to get a more aerodynamic car
Or when he qualified with wheel covers, and cut them out before the race ( rules didn't stipulate you had to cut them before qualifying )
The guy was a legend, and I think racing would be much more interesting if we had more of him
Or placed an inflated basketball in the fuel tank when it was going to be measured for capacity, only to deflate the basketball for the race.
Or load the car with cold (more dense) fuel.
Or (allegedly) race a 15/16ths scale car with a matching 15/16ths scale street car strategically parked in the track parking lot so the scrutineers could compare against a stock car and see that it matched.
Or built a race engine with the correct size cylinder in the easiest to measure location and oversized cylinders in every other position.
Other racers had special lead-filled radios and overweight helmets that would be in the car for tech, then get changed out before qualifying. Or lead shot filled in the frame rails and a wax seal or threaded fitting to keep it in. Darrell Waltrip tells a hilarious story where the threaded seal was in the jack point and NASCAR jacked the car to go look for it. Moving bars of Mallory (tungsten, basically) from the right to left after passing tech. Another racer was caught with a 22 gallon tank (20 was the limit at the time), apologized and agreed to change it. (He changed it to a 28 gallon tank.)
Definitely a Smokey Yunick special there. That whole idea is so iconic / infamous in racing that it's directly referenced in the movie Days of Thunder in a scene where Harry Hogge is talking to the car he's started building and says something like "I'm going to give you a fuel line that will hold an extra gallon of fuel".
They didn't mention Smokey by name, but it was clearly an allusion to that.
It's definitely being played up so I think they did something right. My friends (who aren't Nascar fans) sent it to me, it was all over Twitter and Facebook, and now here in the #1 spot on the site I least expected it to show up.
> A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
Reminds me of an England v Italy rugby match a few years back where Italy completely abused the offside rule that resulted in England, seemingly, wanting the rules changed after that match (though Eng still won).
Yes, and if you are an actual motorsport fan creating a 'mario kart boost' mode makes your sport look dumb.
At least the way F1 does KERS is more controlled and logical (maximum amount of charge = maximum amount of additional horsepower you can deploy per lap)
DRS is a bit more of a parallel since when you're allowed to use it is completely artificial to create competition. But still in that case it's at least all decided on the track. Having drivers get a boost based on fan voting is stupid and does indeed cost the sport credibility.
everyone has the same additional power allocation and everyone has to go through attack mode twice in a race -- it's a strategic call of when you want to use the additional power, and when you can stand to lose a second or two going far off the optimal line to activate it. this is essentially similar to the overtake system in indycar or super formula. it's certainly not much worse than DRS.
now, the "fanboost" which gave certain drivers (almost always the same handful for years one end) an additional "push to pass" option based on social media voting -- that shit sucked. it's also gone next season.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean super un safe cross country races? Its called rallying.
Do you mean impractically long drag races where lol turns out I wasn't flooring it and now I'm really flooring it? That aspect of redline doesn't make any sense.
Or maybe just the competitors build their own cars and anything goes? I could get behind that. Racing seemed more pure back when it was dudes who built their own cars in their own garage.
That’s not too far off from how Darlington and a few other tracks work. If you “ride the cushion” of air between the car and the wall you can drive faster than being a few inches away from the wall or rubbing the wall.
I definitely don't think you want people doing this every race, but you could leave it alone for now and see if that becomes an issue before worrying about it too much. It's possible that now that people know it's a possibility, they'll simply defend the outside line out of the last corner, which could shut it down fairly effectively.
Running the cushion is not what Ross Chastain did. At Darlington and a few other tracks you ride as close as you can to the wall without much more than the occasional tap. If your paint is scraped up but the body panels aren’t bent you did it correctly. Many years ago they used to put 2x4s in the fender walls to protect them but now this requires car control.
While they could argue it's a safety issue, at the same time it's a risky move, and it could end up in the car crashing and being out of the race entirely, so it's a bit self-managing.
I mean if they start equipping cars with side wheels then it becomes a different matter, but I'm pretty sure the cars are already tightly regulated.
> A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
That's exactly what happened in the cycling world when UCI decided they needed to ban the "supertuck"[1]
This has actually happened - pro road cyclist Matej Mohorič won Milan-San Remo in 2022 with a dropper post [1]. Apparently it was a standard round post, though.
oh yeah sorry I should have mentioned that this incident inspired the theory. Only round dropper posts currently exist and are made by third parties, but I could see frame builders making proprietary aero ones.
You could penalize it but if he had to do it on the next turn his sidewalls would have blown out. It’s definitely something to add to the end of race all-chips-in bag of tricks.
2) A lot of times something like this is how you form some new regulations - it's truly one of those "You know, this was excellent but we can't do it again" situations.
3) The best course forward is to leave it alone and legal in this moment, publicize it, but also treat it as the formation of some new rules.
Side note, Nascar 2005, which he referenced as one of his inspirations for this, is one of my favorite gamecube games. I remember picking it up and playing it for hours on end, the soundtrack was awesome, and it didn't feel like an EA cash-grab at the time. Man how times have changed...
Edit: Extra info - the 11 of Hamlin has previously made it into the chase for the champion ship by _intentionally wrecking drivers_ , so by and large a huge part of the fan base believes he got what was coming to him.