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2012 NASCAR Season Long Thread

leftcoastdeac

leftcoastdeac

Robert O'Kelley
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Headed to the Bud Shootout this weekend to meet up with some college friends. I think there's only 1 or 2 race fans in the group so the race is really just a cover for drinking with the boys in Daytona.

Have a few questions for the NASCAR fans out here - I read some news articles and some of them indicate the Shootout should be more about "Pack Racing" and less about "two car tandem racing" What do these things mean? How does the race change based on which type of racing is happening?
 
Dude, just call Hammer. (If you don't get the answer you need on here, shoot me a pm, slammed at work today, but could answer later)
 
bojanglefunk said:
Dude, just call Hammer. (If you don't get the answer you need on here, shoot me a pm, slammed at work today, but could answer later)
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Hammer's part of the crew I'm meeting up with, but he's busy at work today and lagging on emails.
 
At the super-speedways, the new cars tend to go faster when they're drafting in 2-car packs... but if you lose your drafting partner, you're screwed.

The shootouts aren't long enough to develop real strategies & allegiances with certain partners (since you don't really know who you match up with speed wise & late in runs until the race is over).... so you'll see more of the cars staying together and not as many teams trying to take off with another car.

ETA: a couple of years ago (and pretty much through the history of nascar...) the name of the game in restricter-plate racing @ super-speedways was to stay in the pack... the 'draft' was created by the field more so than by individual cars; for some reason, the new cars react much better to the single car draft & the car in front is much more powerful to lead the duo because of the reduced drag created by the aerodynamics of having another car on its bumper.
 
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watch this starting at about 7:00.... its a pretty good example of how it works:

 
vtwhat etc said:
At the super-speedways, the new cars tend to go faster when they're drafting in 2-car packs... but if you lose your drafting partner, you're screwed.

The shootouts aren't long enough to develop real strategies & allegiances with certain partners (since you don't really know who you match up with speed wise & late in runs until the race is over).... so you'll see more of the cars staying together and not as many teams trying to take off with another car.
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If I understood what I read correctly, NASCAR isn't allowing drivers to talk to each other to prevent the 2 car drafting...since the race is so much shorter the points races, will it be more exciting (ie., less time for strategy, more aggressive racing to get the win, etc)?
 
leftcoastdeac said:
Headed to the Bud Shootout this weekend to meet up with some college friends. I think there's only 1 or 2 race fans in the group so the race is really just a cover for drinking with the boys in Daytona.

Have a few questions for the NASCAR fans out here - I read some news articles and some of them indicate the Shootout should be more about "Pack Racing" and less about "two car tandem racing" What do these things mean? How does the race change based on which type of racing is happening?
Click to expand...

With the advent of the restrictor plate a few years back, it bunched the cars up which created large packs traveling at nearly 200mph. If you lost the pack, the wind resistance would make it next to impossible to catch back up. This led to catastrophic wrecks because the slightest mistake with everyone being so bunched together didnt give people time to slow down without getting plowed over, like this:



A couple years back, with the new style car teams found out it was actually faster to race two cars nestled together, "tandem" racing. The aerodynamics spread the field out more, but made the racing much more boring. So rather than large packs, you ended up with this type of racing:

Obviously you can still have bigger wrecks with the tandem racing, but those two videos can give you an idea of pack racing vs tandem drafting. In the offseason Nascar made some aerodynamic changes to hopefully get away from the tandem racing because its boring as hell except for the last few laps.
 
Man I would love to hang out with you and Hammer and (just guessing here- Nate, maybe RDP, MAC?)
 
tsywake said:
With the advent of the restrictor plate a few years back, it bunched the cars up which created large packs traveling at nearly 200mph. If you lost the pack, the wind resistance would make it next to impossible to catch back up. This led to catastrophic wrecks because the slightest mistake with everyone being so bunched together didnt give people time to slow down without getting plowed over, like this:



A couple years back, with the new style car teams found out it was actually faster to race two cars nestled together, "tandem" racing. The aerodynamics spread the field out more, but made the racing much more boring. So rather than large packs, you ended up with this type of racing:

Obviously you can still have bigger wrecks with the tandem racing, but those two videos can give you an idea of pack racing vs tandem drafting. In the offseason Nascar made some aerodynamic changes to hopefully get away from the tandem racing because its boring as hell except for the last few laps.
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NASCAR has at least acknowledged that fans hate the tandem racing and are working on how to stop it.
 
I should say, the restrictor plate is older than just a few years. IIRC it was in 1987 after the crash below, in an effort to keep cars from flying into the stands. Studies have shown that going over 200mph increases the chances of this happening:

 
As stated by bojangle, Nascar surveyed some fans about the tandem racing vs. pack racing at the restrictor plate tracks and something like 80% of the fans preferred the pack racing. Therefore, Nascar has been working on the aero package to get the cars back to where they cannot tandem race for long or the engine will overheat, therefore causing them to get back to pack racing. We will see how this plays out in the Shootout and the 500. No one really knows what is going to happen, including the drivers.
 
Oh, and I want to go on the record as saying that this needs to be moved to the Sports Board.
 
I really want to go down to Daytona for Speedweeks at some point. I'm definitely jealous leftcoast.
 
tsywake said:
I really want to go down to Daytona for Speedweeks at some point. I'm definitely jealous leftcoast.
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This is my first time in Daytona. There was a pretty good crew for the 500 last year, but I did not participate in that adventure - we chose the Shootout this year because of the holiday on Monday.

I'm hoping for a good time!
 
We're camping for the night race at Bristol this year, but 'tona is certainly on my bucket list.
 
Daytona is good to go to just say you went, but IMHO it's not as good of an experience as other tracks unless you want to pay a hell of a lot for even decent tickets. I went last year to the 500 and the backstretch started at $6o I think for low seats and even at the higher up seats on the back ($90-100 I believe) you couldn't see shit except in the turns. Couldn't get on the front stretch anywhere for under 120, 125.

Shootout tickets on the other hand are much more reasonable ($90 list price for start/finish line upper deck), granted it's not as long of a race so there's that trade-off too.
 
CHSDeac said:
Daytona is good to go to just say you went, but IMHO it's not as good of an experience as other tracks unless you want to pay a hell of a lot for even decent tickets. I went last year to the 500 and the backstretch started at $6o I think for low seats and even at the higher up seats on the back ($90-100 I believe) you couldn't see shit except in the turns. Couldn't get on the front stretch anywhere for under 120, 125.

Shootout tickets on the other hand are much more reasonable ($90 list price for start/finish line upper deck), granted it's not as long of a race so there's that trade-off too.
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We're in the tower, near the start/finish line. With a military discount, tickets were $55 each. Figured it would be hard to beat that price and still get a block of seats together through the box office / scalping.
 
Tandem drafting is so stupid. The radio restriction is better than nothing, but why not just have something like the NBA's 3-second rule - tell drivers if they're on someone's bumper for more than 5 seconds, they get penalized.

Also, if anyone is still interested in learning more about it, SI had a really good story about how Kurt Busch kind of started it:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1182313/index.htm
 
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