(06-30-2017 12:28 PM)JMUETC Wrote: (06-28-2017 10:54 PM)BleedingPurple Wrote: (06-28-2017 10:46 PM)2Buck Wrote: (06-28-2017 03:28 PM)BleedingPurple Wrote: (06-28-2017 11:40 AM)Potomac Wrote: I love that our coaches are still finding ways to help steer a young man if the NFL doesn't bite. I agree that it could be tough for a married man with a child to let that consume their whole weekend. I didn't realize they weren't full time.
It's the guys who go to the track when the car leaves who are full time. There are also many guys who build the cars who don't go to the track, they are also full time. It's been a couple decades now that these athletes have taken over the duties of pitting the cars during the race. They have very minor responsibilities on the car itself.
They usually arrive on raceday, set up the pit area, work the race, tear down the pit area, and go home. They'll go to the shop for practice and training, but most try to get regular jobs that have some flexibility. We had a couple guys who were physical therapist, some guys might be employed at a gym, yet quite a few are normal business people who might work at your local bank.
The guy who worked for us from Stanford, was a full time guy doing a lot of odd jobs, but when he left us and went to Hendricks, he became self employed and started a company renting scanners to fans to use during a race so they could listen in on their favorite team's conversation during an event. He was also paid extra to be the "trainer" for the other pit crew members at Hendricks. He also helped in the selection process.
Sometimes the teams will find a use for a pit crew member and bring him on full time, but for the most part, they don't turn wrenches, build fenders, or know how to spray paint a car. Their purpose is to take four tires off, put four tires on, and fill the car up with gas in 11 seconds. They'll be taught how to make some quick repairs with tape, or get a fender off a tire which contacted the wall or another car, but anything major, they pull the car to the garage and the real mechanics and fabricators go to work.
Though, NASCAR has come up with some rules preventing a car from going back out on the track which takes more than five minutes to repair forcing the guys pitting the car to be a little more in step with the team. I think the teams can still make mechanical repairs like change an axle but not anything major that happens due to a wreck.
I think they need to do a better job of leveraging the skills of these young athletes. Make them start at opposite ends and plow through each other before they can get to their cars. Dude fumbles a tire? Now it's yours. Sacked holding the gas can? Now you can only use half. Is the jack too heavy to pass?
May as well, it would go hand-in-hand with some of the stupid rules they've put in place over the past several years. If Brian France were running the NFL he's have moved the goal post to the present day side line and have the field 100 yards wide and 53 1/3 yards long. The man has ruined a great sport.
Not a NASCAR fan particularly but a sports fan. Can you summarize some of these changes that have ruined things. Just curious.
Wow!!! That would be like writing a book. I will say that it started with a philosophical strategy. In '97 they they brought all the team owners, team management, and drivers together to give us a little talk on how they would be placing a greater emphasis on the drivers and pushing them to become stars in the fan's eye. This lead to the change of the racecar itself. One of the first things done was to make all the cars totally identical with the exception of the engine, what one team brought to the track was essentially the same as all others teams. Decals were the only way a fan could differentiate between a Ford versus a Chevy. Google IROC and you will see the direction they were taking NASCAR racing.
Prior to this evolution it was always man and his machine against 40+ other men and their machine. While the fans always had their favorite driver, those drivers were always connected with their owners like Junior Johnson, The Wood Brothers, Petty Enterprises, Bud Moore, Richard Childress, fans even knew who was driving for Junie Donlavey (one of the lesser financed teams).
It used to be that wherever you took your family car for maintenance, you could strike up a conversation with your mechanic about the most recent event and he would have some connection (inside informant) and could give the fan a little detail of the way he understood what Harry Gant and his Skoal Bandit Chevy was doing to win his fourth race in a row. There were always a little gray areas in the rules which teams would exploit and massage in an attempt to gain an advantage. We had 20 - 30 templates to stay with-in leaving a lot of areas the fabricators could play with. We would go to a track with about six different combination of gear ratios to try during our practice sessions, along with all sorts of shocks, springs, sway bars, and other chassis components and it was completely up to the teams to decide what combination would be best for Sunday.
Back at the shop, when building cars, we would move bodies forward or back on the chassis for what we felt was optimum for a particular track. We would put camber in the rear axle helping the car through the corners. More camber for a short track less for a superspeedway. This barely touches the subject of trying to equalize the competition, but all of this is now controlled by NASCAR. There are rules on top of rules where all the teams have had to hire engineers in order to interpret the rules.
We used to show up at a track with an engine, practice and qualify with it, then right before the final practice put our race engine in. This kept the mileage down on the race motor. We could really "beat" up that first engine, by running iced down water through it prior to every lap on the track before qualifying. We'd put oil as thin as water in it and completely seal off the front end for the two laps of qualifying to gain as much downforce as possible. We put those engines right on the edge of exploding, then change it out for the race. Once again NASCAR stopped this and now penalizes a team for such a tactic.
I remember going to Talladega and we were uncertain which engine to use for the race (we had brought three potential race motors). In a one hour time period, the final practice, we tried three different engines. Our competitors could not believe what they were seeing us do. It was an almost impossible task.
Another time, same track, we qualified on Friday, our driver really liked what he felt out of the motor we had just qualified with and wanted to race it. We took it out, drove it back to Charlotte inside a van. Completely rebuilt it for the race, with the guys working all night. We loaded it back in the van at about 9:00 am Saturday morning, and took off back down to Talladega arriving just about the time that final practice was starting, we managed to get that engine back in the racecar in time to run about 25 laps of that final practice.
Once Junior Johnson's team blew an engine during a race, I believe it was Dover, and they changed out that motor in just a little over 11 minutes returning to the race. NASCAR has now stopped all such tactics, but as you can see, the teams were every bit as important to the success or failure as was the driver and fans liked knowing these stories and what transpired during a weekend.
Beyond the car: After they started changing the direction of the car itself, they began to change the way the event was run. They've changed the qualifying format, the way the cars line up for restarts, and now one car, which has been lapped, is given a free pass when a caution comes out to make up a lap. There are so many race procedure rule changes that a fan cannot begin to keep up and figure out what is going on. If you watch the race on TV, and it's 25 laps into the race and you want to know how many laps are in the race, it's impossible to find out, they are now breaking the race down into segments and all that will be talked about is how many laps remain in that segment. You'll have to go to the internet to find out how many laps are in the race at least until that final segment has begun.
I could go on and on, but simply take a look at the stands, and you'll see that NASCAR has lost it's way with the fans.