Drivers continue calls for less grassy areas inside of tracks
DAYTONA BEACH, Florida – Jimmie Johnson did a nice job keeping his car off the inside wall when he went sliding from contact on the backstretch during Saturday's Sprint Unlimited. But despite the lack of contact with the wall, Johnson's race was over.
Why? He slid through the grass that's between the track and the inside wall at the track. When Johnson's car hit the grass, the nose of his car dug into the ground and was significantly damaged.
"We need to get rid of the grass – the grass in the tri-oval and the grass at the end of the backstretch," Ryan Newman said. "You saw what Jimmie Johnson did cutting across there. If his nose would have snagged the grass the wrong way, he would have flipped over and could have ended up in the lake or close to it. There’s a lot of things we need to keep our eyes on. Did he stay safe? Yes. Did he stay off the wall? Yes. Did he rip the nose of his car unnecessarily? Absolutely."
Remember Dale Earnhardt's pass in the grass? It would be exponentially tougher to pull off today.
Because of the cars' increasing aerodynamic reliance, engineers focus on getting the nose of a car as close to the ground as possible. Space between the front valence and the pavement isn't a good thing. And while that lack of space is beneficial on the track, when a driver gets off the track – and into the grass – it can be disastrous. Just look at what happened to Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Texas in 2014.
Brad Keselowski can certainly relate to Johnson's Unlimited plight. He had the nose ripped off his car sliding through the infield at Daytona in the 2015 race.
“Yeah, I am not real happy with that," Keselowski said when referencing Johnson's incident. "Not just in the context of Jimmie but our cars are – and I have kind of beaten this drum and I feel like I am beating it again – the cars are turning into all aero and having aerodynamic grip to have any speed and in that sense they have become incredibly fragile and kind of turned a corner to being more similar to Indy Car."
"I am not a fan of that. I feel like stock car racing should be about contact and right now if you rub fenders with someone at a track above 100 mph you are going to lose about 10 to 20-percent of your cars performance which is more than enough to take away your ability to win a race."
Kyle Busch – another advocate for removing grass – slid through the grass at Daytona in February before he crashed into an unprotected inside wall, breaking his right leg and his left foot. Daytona and other tracks have reportedly spent $40 million to install SAFER barrier where it wasn't before (including at the spot of Busch's impact). But while SAFER barriers are installed all over, few, if any, tracks have made recent plans to get rid of the grass inside tracks.
While pavement gives drivers more opportunity to regain control, it is expensive, especially when it means sod is getting torn up. And grass looks better than pavement does. Plus, it's also worth mentioning that the impact of grass around tracks could be lessened with new rules that keep the noses of cars off the ground.
With a movement to more mechanical front-end grip and less aerodynamic grip, the consequences could be much more minimal.
But look at all the testing and time it took for the lower-downforce package that teams are running in 2016 to become a reality. Believing that there would be a rule change sometime soon that drastically affects the front ends of the cars is like believing you're going to win the Powerball. Sure, it's not impossible, but it's highly unlikely.
And Newman would like tracks to look at another thing too.
“The other thing – and NASCAR has done a better job at it but we haven’t perfected it all – is a place like Daytona which is a multi-use facility is narrowing up the racing surface so we can only hit at a certain angle," Newman said. "That’s the ultimate thing. You don’t want to change and increase your angle to the point where it becomes more dangerous. Kyle Busch’s crash was the best worst-case scenario. There were no SAFER Barriers, he had an increasing angle of impact as he got down there and still hit going really fast. One of the tracks where I’ve seen that happen the best, with the exception of the grass deal, is Pocono. They’ve brought the inside wall out so that we’re not having that situation. Daytona has its own challenges, but there’s a fix for everything. It’s just a matter of spending time, money and effort to do it right.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
