When the marathon becomes a sprint

Last week at the greatest of all sports car races, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Audi celebrated its triumph with a dramatic release of raw emotion, not just at winning the race, but rather surviving, literally, an unforgiving day and night of racing that saw two of its three entries disintegrate in spectacular crashes. The celebration of the win was sweet, but not so much as knowing that their two drivers and teammates emerged essentially unscathed from horrific accidents.


First up, in the fist hour of the race, former F1 pilot Allan McNish, while battling for the lead, tangled with a slower car and careened into the barriers, going airborne, and somehow, someway not plowing into the photographers pit or the grandstands. That no one, no one, was injured is almost unbelievable when watching the replay.

As night fell on the race and the teams, announcers, and spectators settled in for the long haul of a cold, dark French night, the second Audi driven by Mike Rockenfeller was clipped by a slower car when overtaking on one of the speediest approaches on the circuit. While the dark night negates the video, the pictures of the aftermath show the effects of a cataclysmic impact with the Armco barriers. Perhaps both shaken and stirred, Rockenfeller escaped the crash without serious injuries.

Both accidents involved slower traffic, the root of many bent and twisted race cars in sports car races around the globe. It’s dangerous, but it’s an unavoidable, albeit risky, necessity inherent with multiple classes of entries all competing on one circuit and the same time.

Governing bodies should continue to monitor and impress upon the slower classes – watch your mirrors and keep to your lines. Ultimately though, it’s the responsibility of the drivers of the faster cars, the prototypes, and those doing the overtaking. Learned from motorcycle racing, let it known – if you’re passing on the high side, know that all bets are off. Hold your breath and hang on.

One topic missing from the conversation of the accidents last weekend is the aggressive, no-time-for-patience moves taken by both McNish and Rockenfeller. Of course, hindsight is 20-20, but a little lift here and there, a little more caution, and both incidents might have been avoided. So, why not lift?

Sports car racing has become incredibly competitive in the past decade. It wasn’t that long ago that 24-hour titles were won through reliability and durability, with attrition taking down one top contender after another until only a few were left. There would be ample time to pop into the pits and clean up the car, scrubbing the bugs, oil, rubber, and grime of 24 hours off so the victory lane photograph would shine with a well-deserved brilliance. In fact, teams could take the luxury of gathering its cars together for the final laps, driving in parade formation, nose-to-tail, capturing the perfect photo opp to appear in marketing materials for the next year.

Those days are gone. This winter at Daytona, the top four cars, from three different teams, finished on the same lap, within seconds of each other. At LeMans last week, the top six cars were separated by half a second in qualifying. Yes, no big surprise at a NASCAR event on a 1.5 mile oval or even the IndyCars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But, remember, the LeMans circuit is over 8 miles long! A half a second over eight miles is as close to even as it gets.

24-hour races aren’t really approached as endurance events anymore, not by the top teams. They are year-around efforts and are approached as the longest sprint races on the schedule. To compete and win, drivers have to go 10/10ths the entire time.

There’s no time in a 24-hour race to wait, to be patient. A driver has to seize the opportunity at the moment it’s presented, for there’s the likelihood it won’t come around again. So, seize they do, consequences be damned.

We can all be grateful that the consequences last weekend weren’t more severe.

Hot lap on Twitter @RayHartjen

So nice they raced it twice

IndyCar series officials went back thirty years last night in an effort to spice up the Texas race and the annual post-Indy hangover – a doubleheader of twin 275 Km races. Give them an ‘A’ for effort, but in the end, there wasn’t much intrigue, excitement, or, oddly, racing. It was a parade, albeit a high-speed parade, and despite attempts to market it as otherwise, it fell short of even a typical 1.5 mile race, despite the number of time Dan Wheldon tried to convince us that it was “intense.”

Since the formation of the Indy Racing League, IndyCar has made a distinct effort at building an audience for the sport, starting with the casual fan and hoping to convert them to hard-core fans with a trip to the track and the sensual overload of sight, sound, smell, feel and taste that is a major league motorsport event.

The staple of casual fan-friendly efforts has been the short oval, of which the 1.5 quad-oval at Texas is exhibit one. A seat along the front-stretch gives visibility to the entire track, it’s relatively easy to light, and it’s banked turns provides the promise of the much coveted – in America – side-by-side racing. For the casual fan, it’s worked. Of the 21 IndyCar races held before Saturday night at Texas, 14 have had margins of victory of less than one second, and seven have been decided by less than a tenth of a second.

But, have you noticed the number of empty grandstands at Texas the past several years? The races have featured tight finishes, but the miles of racing to get there has been a bit on the monotonous side. The drivers won’t say that, to be sure, because thirty cars all with 15 seconds of one another on a lightning fast, banked track makes for one white-knuckled trip. For the fans though, there’s a bit of a déjà vu, a ‘haven’t we seen this before’ kind of feeling.

In a spec-series on a relatively short track, the speeds are too high and the cars too closely matched for racing and overtaking in a sprint race format. Without an ability to work on the cars during pit stops and make the subtle adjustments necessary to moving along with changing track and racing conditions, a sprint-type race comes down to setting up the car with an educated guess in the garage. You hit it right, you run up front. You hit it wrong, you run in the back. With only one opportunity to make changes, you’re stuck playing the hand you drew at the start.

So, Saturday night came and went with an interesting novelty. Will novelty attract the casual fans and turn them into life-long devotees? Maybe, but probably not. Will the life-long devotees get tired of pro wrestling style of promotions and become casual fans? Maybe, but hopefully not.

It’s appropriate to give kudos to IndyCar and Texas promoter Eddie Gossage for being willing to experiment and switch things up. But, novelties like twin sprints and a lottery for starting positions aren’t going to address the roots of IndyCar’s struggles, but rather provide just a temporary salve for the symptoms.

We’re seeing IndyCar evolve from its ovals-only roots as the IRL, which is a positive step. Thanks, Tony George for setting the stage to get us back to exactly where we were in 1994. The promise of a new car and new development packages are due to arrive next year – halleluiah. Now, we just have to figure out how to keep our enthusiasm up this year, and Milwaukee and Iowa aren’t likely to do that.

We’re hotlapping on Twitter @RayHartjen

Spelling “Overrated” J-U-N-I-O-R

NASCAR continues its left-turn parade this weekend with the STP 400 on the 1.5 mile oval at Kansas Speedway. Fans will undoubtedly pack the track and cheer their favorite drivers and teams on, coupled with their fevered jeers against the perceived evil villains of their favorites’ arch rivals. NASCAR has seemingly become what it aimed to become – the motorized version of the WWE.


The driver who will garner the biggest of the cheers, and very nearly nary a jeer, is Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who has won the fan voting for NASCAR’s most popular driver award eight consecutive years. It’s a title that is understandable, as Dale Jr. is certainly a legacy of stock car racing royalty. What’s not to be confused is the word ‘popular” with “best,” for Junior is rapidly cementing a reputation as the most overrated driver in motorsports.

Since the end of the 2006 season, Junior has won once - one solitary victory, the result of winning on fuel strategy determined in the pits, and, to be fair, a masterful drive to conserve – literally – every last drop of fuel. June 15 will mark the three year anniversary of that trip to victory lane in Michigan, despite driving for the marquee team of NASCAR, Hendrick Motorsports. With each passing lap, each lost race weekend, and each empty season of dashed hopes, Earnhardt’s legion of fans cheer louder and buy more 88 gear. He’s become an industry into himself, the “lovable loser,” the Chicago Cubs of Sundays in the south; 1,081 days and counting. That is, if anyone’s counting.

Did you hear the fans scream as Junior jumped into the lead with two laps to go in Charlotte last weekend? Hope; eternal optimism; the folly of fools. One minute later, did you hear the groans as he ran out of gas on the back stretch and coasted home in 7th place? The cheers and groans were easily audible, even over the roar of 30-plus 700 horsepower engines circling the track.

The winless efforts weren’t always the norm. Junior started racing full-time in the Sprint Cup series in 2000, resplendent in his Budweiser livery. He managed two victories in his maiden campaign, and followed that up with at least two victories each of the next three years. Then, in 2004, he had a breakout campaign, winning a career-high 6 races and contending for a championship.

Oddly enough, 2004 was also the year Earnhardt was burned severely in a sports car accident at Infineon Raceway, where we was moonlighting during a rare weekend off in NASCAR’s nearly year-around schedule. Coincidence? Some think not, feeling maybe he lost his nerve. I won’t go that far, for it takes a lot of nerve to buckle into a hunk of metal and drive 200 miles per hour 6 inches away from three other cars in the draft on the high banks of Talladega.

What can’t be mistaken is the opportunity bestowed on Junior every season. Perhaps in no sport is money better equated with success than motorsport. Simply put, speed is expensive, and the more money you have, the faster you will go. No one, no one, benefits from sponsorship greater than the series’ most popular driver, Junior.

Additionally, no one prepares better cars than Hendrick Motorsport, the organization behind the 5-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson, as well as stable mate and 4-time former champion Jeff Gordon. Since 1995, Rick Hendrick-owned cars have won 10 NASCAR Sprint Cup championships. Since 2008, Hendrick has fielded a car for Junior. The results: 120 starts, 2 pole positions, 15 top-five’s, and one victory.

In terms of “return on investment,” that equates to what is known in NASCAR circles; and, oddly and perhaps polar oppositely, Jewish delicatessens; as “bupkis.”

Be it spread too thin over commercial shoots, side businesses in restaurants and clubs, or ownership of his own JR Motorsports team, or age or talent or some other reason, the fact is that Earnhardt Jr. has under-performed for the past several years. With each passing race, the pressure mounts, despite the affection of his growing army of followers.

It’s time. Time to distinguish between royalty and reality. Time we stop referring to Junior as a real contender and an elite driver in NASCAR’s highest series. Time we recognize the proof points lie in his average finishes the past two years of 22nd and 21st.

Three years. It’s time for Junior to show fans he’s not overrated.

Swap some paint on Twitter @RayHartjen.