Jeff Alan's

NASCAR RACING COMMENTARY

NASCAR Racing Commentary, Observations and Humor from Jeff Alan, Founder of the AD  NASCAR Family Community on America Online

The Good Old Days - Pt. V

Many of NASCAR's colorful characters were not drivers, but mechanics, crew chiefs, owners and engine builders. These folks didn't make their marks with harmless pranks. Instead, they ended up frustrating only the NASCAR technical inspectors who would toil for hours trying to find their stealthy, albeit illegal, alterations.

We end this five-part series with a look at some of the ingenious innovators and their innovations that continue to be passed along from team to team in the NASCAR garage.

One of NASCAR's most prolific car builders was "Smokey" Yunick. He built some of the fastest, sleekest race cars that ever flew the NASCAR banner. And the ‘incident' he is most famous for may have never even happened. It's one of those legendary tales that is still kept alive.

The story was that, just before the Daytona 500, inspectors found a dozen instances of non-conforming parts or alterations that had to be rectified before his car would pass inspection. In the process, they removed the fuel tank. Frustrated, the inspectors told Yunick to get his car out of there. Yunick climbed into the car, fired the engine, and drove away with the fuel tank still lying on the floor of the garage.

Whether it really happened or not, Yunick can still be credited with creating some of the most innovative racecars on the circuit. Yunick is reputed to have had a hand in a car built for Cotton Owens at Daytona that was dramatically faster than any of the other cars. The engine was torn apart, and the car was weighed. NASCAR could not find any satisfactory explanation for the cars' performance. Still, there was something that just didn't look right about the car. Finally, an alert inspector brought in a showroom model of the car. It turned out that Yunick had built a car to 7/8 scale, allowing it to be aerodynamically superior than it's showroom counterpart, or any other car on the track, for that matter. This "innovation" gave birth to the Template that NASCAR henceforth used to check the legal dimensions of the cars.

For many years, Yunick operated a garage in Daytona Beach. It was probably the first ‘speed shop' in Florida at the time it opened for business. Yunick already had a reputation as a master mechanic, and when they ran the old Beach races, his garage was packed with would-be hopefuls looking for a little extra edge. Sometimes, winning cars would pull into "The best damn garage in Town." and have illegal parts removed before inspectors checked it over.

In NASCAR's Good Old Days, cheating was rampant, and few were caught. The car builders and mechanics knew more about a car than any NASCAR inspector. They knew how to hide things, and keep them hidden. They knew how to outsmart the fox.

But it was pretty hard to hide things in the days when the cars had to be "showroom" or "strictly" stock. It was a simple matter of going over the car with factory specs. And what didn't comply, was judged illegal, and had to be fixed before you could go on the track. Still, a few found ways to avoid detection. But it wasn't because of expert engineering. One time, Lee Petty drove a car that had a heavy-duty rear end, and an illegal carburetor. When he was called for inspection after the race, he parked the car outside the NASCAR garage and raised the hood. Richard was already turning the bolts to take the old carb off when a couple of inspectors came out and curtly inquired as to why he had the hood up, and that he'd better close it in a hurry. The elder Petty told the inspectors that the radiator was being drained, and that "this boy was new, and has never done this before."

Somehow, the inspectors bought the excuse, went back inside, and left Petty to not only change the carb, but the rear end as well. The car passed inspection with the illegal rear-end and the carburetor sitting right in the trunk.

The Petty family, despite their beloved image, could bend the rules as much as anyone. And when it came time to cheat, their handiwork remained hidden from inspectors because the Petty's were always one step ahead of NASCAR.

An exception to this was Charlotte, 1983.

There are two stories to this saga. Which one to believe is up to you. But we all have heard that Richard Petty was caught with an "oversized" engine after the race. Petty was fined, and points were taken away.

But another story that floated around at the time bespoke of the brilliance of Richard's engine builder, his brother, Maurice. The rumor had it that Petty was not found to have an illegal engine, and that the infraction was, in fact, something infinitely more diabolical. During post-race inspection, a hidden compartment was supposedly found in the radiator. In that compartment was a bottle of Nitrous Oxide. The story goes on to tell us that Maurice had rigged this bottle to inject Nitrous into the combustion chamber of the motor via a small hose disguised as the fuel line. The driver could activate the Nitrous from the cockpit, thus giving him 25-30 more horsepower down the straights.

Could it have happened? Of course. Did it? Nobody will tell. Petty won't, and NASCAR sure isn't interested. Both parties are perfectly content to stay with the ‘oversized engine' theory. And why not? After all, had it been publicly revealed that Petty had driven a car so blatantly illegal, NASCAR would have had no choice but to disqualify the car's run altogether to appease the outrage from the drivers, sponsors, and other fans. And that would have meant that Richard Petty would have never attained the record of 200 wins.

The win he was allowed to keep was # 199.

Junior Johnson is oftentimes credited for bending NASCAR's rules. Actually, Johnson was an innovator. Many of his techniques simply made his cars run so fast that many accused him of cheating. But even Junior Johnson ----- the man whom the factories came to when they needed advice --- was caught with illegal parts in 1991, and was suspended for several races.

Still, without any doubt, the most brilliant bender of the rules was today's current NASCAR technical director, Gary Nelson. Nelson took the word cheating and turned it into an art form. Cars that he wrenched were the ones' to beat. In a 1987 interview, Nelson revealed some of his more innovative tactics. One involved the cars driven by Darrell Waltrip during one of his championship seasons. Nelson found a way to fill the entire roll-cage of the car with several hundred pounds of buckshot. The car was weighed before the race, and found legal. But when Waltrip went onto the track during pace laps, and reached the banking, he'd pull a hidden lever which allowed the lead to pour from under the car and roll harmlessly down the banking. On the radio, Waltrip would indicate a successful drop by yelling "Bombs Away!" Then, with the car weighing considerably less than the mandated weight, Waltrip would proceed to blow away the field.

NASCAR never discovered this trick. Nelson ingeniously located the exit spout where the jack was positioned. When NASCAR inspectors raised the car with a jack, they concealed the evidence, and cleared the car to qualify and run.

There was a rumor that circulated a few years back that Nelson also engineered a hidden system that injected Nitrous Oxide in the Engines that Darrell Waltrip used at Daytona one year.

When Nelson was working for DiGard, he built a "prototype" car to be entered in the upcoming Firecracker 400 at Daytona. An little-known driver named Greg Sacks took the car and blew away the field. The car was torn apart following the race, but nothing was found --- nothing reported, anyway. Nelson's contemporaries still insist today that something was "not right" about that car, and that NASCAR wasn't smart enough to find out why.

It's little wonder that NASCAR tabbed Nelson to replace Dick Beatty. In fact, when the announcement was made, Richard Childress was forced to remark "About 99 percent of the cheating in this sport has just stopped."

And it did.

While improvements in components and speed will still continue to be a part of NASCAR, the wild days of NASCAR are forever silenced. Corporate dollars and worldwide attention force today's Winston-Cup drivers to live as Prisoners in their own country. Some are afraid of even being seen in public, with their families, having a few beers with dinner.

But, as you have experienced over the past five weeks, there was a time of day when drivers could be themselves ---- off the track. They could party with the best of them. They lived life to the fullest. Even better, the stories that have survived the years to be handed down to future generations will insure that new fans will always hear about The Good Old Days.

EPILOGUE

During the time I was researching and preparing this series, I had to review many published works to clarify some of the details in the stories. But in doing so, I discovered that time had eroded the accuracy of those stories. For example; I researched a particular incident and found that three different drivers --- two of which were directly involved --- had three different versions of the same tale. In these cases, I was forced to use the "version" that came from the person most directly involved. Should you find any contradictions to any story you've read in this series, please bear that in mind.

When I first heard some of these wild tales, I made it a point to confirm them with those who were close to, or involved in them, whenever I saw them in the garage area, or away from the track.

I was very fortunate to meet and speak with Tim Flock in 1991. Our chat only lasted about 10 minutes, but he was able to confirm much of what was included in this series. I also met Chris Economaki many years ago, and he too confirmed these, and other stories, and even proffered a few of his own. Over the years, I have been able to get first-hand accounts of some of these stories from folks like Buck Baker, Richard Petty, Bobby and Donnie Allison. Without their candid remarks, these tales would be forever buried in their souls.

See YOU at the Top!

Jeff Alan

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