About Me:
Oh Rapid Roy that stock car boy, he too much too believe;
You know he always got an extra pack of cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve;
He got a tattoo on his arm that say "Baby", he got another one that just say "Hey";
But every Sunday afternoon
About Me:
Oh Rapid Roy that stock car boy, he too much too believe;
You know he always got an extra pack of cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve;
He got a tattoo on his arm that say "Baby", he got another one that just say "Hey";
But every Sunday afternoon
About Me:
Oh Rapid Roy that stock car boy, he too much too believe;
You know he always got an extra pack of cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve;
He got a tattoo on his arm that say "Baby", he got another one that just say "Hey";
But every Sunday afternoon
This is the point in the series when so much started happening in the sport, that there is simply too much information to try and capture a whole decade in one article. For those reasons, the series will be split into halves in order to truly capture the intricacies surrounding the evolution of stock car racing. Auto racing -- particularly the NASCAR Grand National tour -- in the United States was billed as "The Sport of the 1970s" as the new decade approached. With new, ultra-modern facilities popping up all over the country and millions of dollars being poured into NASCAR stock racing by the automotive factories, the sport seemed to be on a roll.
Despite the overall rosy appearance, the earth was rumbling a bit within the NASCAR domain. Most of the licensed NASCAR Grand National drivers had formed a union called the Professional Drivers Association. The drivers were serious about gaining awareness from NASCAR about conditions at the speedways, including the alarmingly high speeds, the amount of time teams had to spend at a track to prepare for a race, the perceived lack of posted awards, and amenities for the competitors. Even with behind-the-scenes friction, the 1970 NASCAR tour produced many great moments. In those days, the Daytona 500 was not the first race of the season, as the warm California sun beckoned drivers from the cold confines of the South in January, to seek out and conquer the sunny surroundings in Riverside International Raceway, in California. A.J. Foyt's Ford nipped Roger McCluskey's Plymouth Superbird to win the season opener at Riverside. Five-time Riverside winner Dan Gurney finished sixth. In 1970, there were a few firsts to boast about: Pete Hamilton, recently signed to drive a Petty Enterprises Plymouth, posted an upset victory in the Daytona 500. Hamilton passed Ford's David Pearson with nine laps to go and wins by three car lengths. And, James Hylton held off a furious rally by Richard Petty to win the Richmond 500. It was Hylton's first career NASCAR Grand National win and his first start in a Ford after campaigning a Dodge for four years. In another first, Buddy Baker took Chrysler's company car, a royal blue Dodge Daytona, to Talladega for a special world record attempt for a closed circuit. In an officially timed run, Baker became the first driver to surpass the magic 200-mph barrier on a closed oval, with a best lap of 200.447 mph, making him "The Fastest Man on 4 Wheels".
Bobby Isaac overtook James Hylton in late August and won the 1970 NASCAR Grand National champion ship. It was the most competitive title chase in NASCAR history, with Isaac only winning the championship by a mere 51 points. A total of seven drivers swapped the points lead on 12 occasions during the 48-race campaign, a record that still stands.
The loss of the factory-supported team in 1971 was a big blow to the NASCAR Grand Nationals. Every team in NASCAR in 1971, save Petty Enterprises, felt the pinch of the factory withdrawal. Drivers -- and NASCAR itself -- found relief in the form of a sponsorship deal with R.J Reynolds Tobacco Company (the parent company of Winston cigarettes), who in turn gained advertising and naming rights to the newly-christened NASCAR Winston Cup Grand Nationals. It was one of a handful of bright spots in an otherwise troubled season. 1971 saw Richard Petty win his third Daytona 500, while reigning NASCAR champion Bobby Isaac, who had fully intended to defend his title in 1971, was kept at bay by Nord Krauskopf, owner of the #71 K&K Insurance Dodge, who drastically reduced the team's schedule following a dispute with NASCAR over restrictor-plate rules. NASCAR used three different size plates in 1971, issuing more restrictive plates to teams running bigger engines. Isaac ran about half the races in 1971, winning four times. Richard Petty won 21 races in 46 starts and breezed to his third NASCAR Winston Cup Grand National championship, in 1971. The "Randle man Rocket" assumed command of the points chase after the eighth race of the season at Hickory, N.C., in March and never trailed again. He finished 364 points ahead of runner-up James Hylton.
The early part of the 1972 NASCAR Winston Cup season was rather lethargic. Richard Petty lost a cylinder midway through the 250-miler at Martinsville in April, yet still won the race by seven laps. Fan attendance was down, and the forecast for the season was uncertain. But toward the end of the year, a feud exploded between Richard Petty and Bobby Allison, the two front-runners, that would ignite the fierce competition of the rest of the season. A new points system had been introduced, which awarded points per lap completed. This system prevented Petty from taking the points lead until the 11th race of the season at Talladega. Petty had finished higher than James Hylton in nine of the first 10 races, including victories in four events, but Hylton maintained the points lead due to more laps completed. When Hylton was involved in a crash at Talladega, Petty claimed the lead, which he held for the balance of the season, holding off Bobby Allison by 127.5 points. During the 1973 NASCAR Winston Cup season, NASCAR had not given up hope for small engines, though the lack of team sponsors prevented the sanctioning body from putting the heavily restricted big engines out to pasture. Although David Parsons enjoyed a record record year in 1973, winning 10 of 15 starts on superspeedways and 11 of 18 for the season, the unsponsored team of L.G. DeWitt and Benny Parsons won a single race and took the NASCAR Winston Cup championship trophy in a significant upset. Parsons took the points lead with a third-place finish at Talladega in early May and never gave up the lead. He held off a late rally by Cale Yarborough to win by only 67.15 points. Under NASCAR's points system, in which points per lap completed were factored in, Parsons was unaware of what position he would have to finish in at the finale at Rockingham to seal the championship. Parsons crashed early, but his team was able to make miraculous repairs to get him back into the race. He completed enough laps to wrap up the 1973 title.
Five drivers had a mathematical chance to win the championship entering the final event of the 28-race season. Winless drivers Cecil Gordon and James Hylton finished third and fourth, while six-time winner Richard Petty placed fifth in the final standings. The 1974 NASCAR Winston Cup Grand National season faced the threat of a shut-down when, in late 1973, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced a general boycott on oil exports to Europe, Japan, and the United States. Faced with an oil crisis, NASCAR took immediate steps to conserve fuel. Among other changes, the length of all races was cut by 10 percent, which went a long way toward the goal of reducing fuel use by 25 percent. This included the Daytona event, as Richard Petty rallied from a flat tire to take the lead with 11 laps remaining, and drove to victory in the first, 450-mile Daytona 500. Speedway officials had decided to drop the first 20 laps from the race, and count the first lap as lap 21 to maintain the "500" in the name of NASCAR's most prestigious event. Meanwhile, NASCAR continued to move toward the use of smaller engines, and made several rule changes. Despite the rule changes, the overwhelming majority of races were won by Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, and David Pearson. In addition to the reduction in the number of laps per race, 1974 produced a couple of other interesting scenarios during the race season. Among them involved a cagey David Pearson, who outfoxed Richard Petty to win the Firecracker 400 in a puzzling finish. Pearson lead entering the final lap, but pulled down to the low groove to allow Petty to pass. Pearson regained his stride, running Petty down, and making the decisive pass just before the finish line. Buddy Baker and Cale Yarborough finished in a dead heat for third place.
Another involved Canadian rookie Earl Ross, who outlasted Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough and outran Buddy Baker in the final laps to win the Old Dominion 500 at Martinsville. Ross became the first Canadian driver to win a NASCAR Winston Cup Grand National race. Lastly, Bobby Allison drove a Matador to a surprise victory in the 500-miler at Ontario Motor Speedway. During the customary postrace inspection, NASCAR officials discovered the Roger Penske-owned Matador is equipped with illegal roller tappets. The team is allowed to keep the win, but is fined a record $9,100. Richard Petty won his fifth championship by 567.45 points in a complicated points system used for just one year.
NASCAR drastically changed its points system for the 1974 season, and it proved to be the most confusing method ever used. Fractions of points were multiplied and remultiplied after each race. The concept was to award points in direct relation to money won. Under the peculiar system, the 1-2 finishers in the rich Daytona 500 were virtually assured of a 1-2 finish in the final standings. Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough finished first and second at Daytona and ranked 1-2 in the final standings.
All drama for the points chase ended in February. Petty and Yarborough had their Daytona points added to their point total after each event, making it virtually impossible for anyone to overtake them. In the Darlington Southern 500, Petty crashed early and placed 35th, yet still had more points added to his total than Darrell Waltrip, who finished second. Petty accumulated 5,037.75 points, compared to Yarborough's runner-up total of 4,470.30. David Pearson finished third with 2,389.25 points. Thankfully, the system was changed after only one year. By the 1975 NASCAR Winston Cup Grand National season, the transition from big to small engines was complete. All cars were equipped with the same-size engines and the restrictor plates were gone. With a standard set of rules, and the 4th change in the points systems in five years, stability had gained a foothold within the NASCAR kingdom. Despite smaller fields of competition, NASCAR Winston Cup racing was getting more television time as well.
1975 saw its fair share of interesting storylines, as Benny Parsons led off the season by taking the lead three laps from the finish and winning the Daytona 500 after leader David Pearson spun out on the backstretch. Parsons came from the 32nd starting position to claim the upset win and the biggest victory of his career. Buddy Baker ended his two-year drought by winning the Winston 500 at Talladega. Baker's Bud Moore Ford finished a car length in front of runner-up David Pearson. And a young Darrell Waltrip racked up his first career NASCAR Winston Cup Grand National victory with a two-lap triumph in the Music City USA 420 at his hometown Nashville Speedway. Benny Parsons came home second with Coo Coo Marlin third. Tragedy also claimed an unfortunate headline in 1975, as DeWayne "Tiny" Lund lost his life at the Talladega 500. Buddy Baker nosed out Richard Petty in a photo finish to win the race, which was marred by the death Lund who was involved in a multi-car crash on the seventh lap. Dewayne "Tiny" Lund Not the crash that killed Tiny, but a bad one nonetheless.
Journeyman Dave Marcis drove a Dodge to his first career NASCAR Winston Cup Grand National victory in the Old Dominion 500 at Martinsville Speedway. Marcis passed Benny Parsons with 40 laps to go and scored a three-second victory. Although he only scored one win throughout the 1975 season, Marcis still managed to come within 722 points of keeping Richard Petty, who won 13 races, from taking his 6th championship. The new points system drew mixed reviews. While it was designed to encourage more teams to commit to running the full schedule, many observers felt a greater amount of points should be awarded at the major superspeedway races than the short tracks. Petty received more points for winning Richmond and leading the most laps than Benny Parsons did for winning the Daytona 500.
NASCAR officials said they approved of the way the points system worked and indicated it would likely remain unchanged for several years to come. It remained in place until 2001, when Brian France introduced the new "Chase for the Championship" format which awarded more point for wins and restarted the points count for the top 10-12 drivers for the last 10 races of the season.
Saturday, January 17, 2009, 05:11 PM EST
[General]
By the 1960 NASCAR Grand National season, work had already begun on new supertracks in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Hanford, Calif. NASCAR had also found its way into the electronic media with CBS Sports' live telecast of three preliminary races during the Daytona Speedweeks. With NASCAR races beginning to show up on the tube in American homes, the automobile industry realized the Automobile Manufacturers Association 1957 ban on participation was hindering their efforts in promotions, sales, and performance.
Factory representation in NASCAR was on a dramatic rise by 1960, although all members of the AMA said publicly that they were still adhering to the original guidelines of the 1957 resolution. Ford and General Motors even hired individuals to spy on each other. In 1960, GM won 20 NASCAR Grand National events, including the Daytona 500, Charlotte's World 600, and the NASCAR Grand National championship. Ford won 15 times, while Chrysler's conservative effort with the Petty Engineering camp scored nine wins. The kickoff of speed weeks for the opening of the 1960 season saw the biggest crash in NASCAR history, just after the start of the Daytona 250-mile Modified-Sportsman race. Near the conclusion of the opening lap, Dick Foley slid sideways through the fourth turn. Foley was able to right his path and continue on, but the field stacked up behind him. Thirty-seven cars became involved and 24 were eliminated. A dozen cars flipped wildly and eight drivers went to the hospital, none injured seriously.
1960 also saw a couple more firsts, as Herman Beam becomes the first driver to be black-flagged in a NASCAR event at Daytona International Speedway. Race officials notice that Beam forgot to put on his helmet before the Twin 100-mile qualifying race. NASCAR officials park Beam for the remainder of the race. Another first involved a young Richard Petty scored the first win of his career in the 100-mile NASCAR Grand National event at the Charlotte Fairgrounds Speedway. The 22-year-old Petty collected $800 for his first win. Junior Johnson passed a spinning Bobby Johns with nine laps remaining and hustles to victory in the second annual Daytona 500. Driving a 1959 Chevrolet Impala, Johnson beats a record 68-car field and wins $19,600. Rex White scored 6 wins in 1960 and beat Richard Petty for the championship by almost 4000 points. In the 1961 NASCAR Grand National season, General Motors continued winning, taking 41 races in all. Pontiac won 30 and Chevrolet won 11, but Ford won only seven times. Chrysler managed to win four short-track events. Ned Jarrett won only one race during the 1961 season, a 100-miler at Birmingham in June, but it was good enough to walk away with the NASCAR Grand National championship. Early in the 1962 NASCAR Grand National season, General Motors was racking up impressive numbers in the victory column. GM won 18 of the first 20 races, 12 by Pontiac. Plymouth scored twice and Ford had a big zero. In June 1962, Ford Motor Co. president Henry Ford II announced his company was stepping out of the 1957 Automobile Manufacturers Association ban on NASCAR participation and would actively -- and publicly -- be involved in NASCAR racing.
Joe Weatherly, in his second year driving Bud Moore's Pontiacs, won the 1962 NASCAR Grand National championship. Weatherly won nine races and posted 31 top-three finishes in 52 starts in his impressive drive to the title. Weatherly took the points lead following a runner-up finish in Charlotte's World 600 and sprinted to a 2,396-point margin over Richard Petty. For the 1963 NASCAR Grand National season, NASCAR established a new set of rules to address the potential of unlimited engineering by the factories. For one, a 428 cubic inch limit on engine displacement was put into effect. By limiting the cid, NASCAR could keep the factories in check and keep the present components from becoming obsolete. Regardless, Ford started the 1963 Grand National campaign with a bang, finishing 1-2-3-4-5 in the celebrated Daytona 500. As the curtain lifted for the 1964 NASCAR Grand National season, Chrysler was loaded for bear. The Plymouths and Dodges were more streamlined aerodynamically and packed with a bundle of horsepower, but Chrysler dusted off an idea from the early 1950s and came up with a "new" engine -- the 426 Hemi. Cars could now travel up to 175 mph, but with the increased speeds came increased danger, and the unlimited horsepower race exacted a heavy toll. Richard Petty won his first of seven NASCAR championships in 1964. Driving an electric blue Plymouth Belvedere, Petty won nine races in 61 starts and racked up nearly 5,000 more points than runner-up Ned Jarret, who won 15 races that year. Near the end of 1964, NASCAR announced new rules for 1965, including outlawing the Chrysler Hemi engine and the Belvedere model.
Petty and most of the other Chrysler factory team cars withdrew in protest from the 1965 NASCAR Grand National tour. He would not defend his championship that year, and top contenders David Pearson, Paul Goldsmith, Bobby Isaac, Jim Paschal, and Lee Roy Yarbrough were on the sidelines. It was a season marked by protest and controversy. Veteran Ned Jarrett prevailed in a season-long struggle with rookie driver Dick Hutcherson to capture his second NASCAR Grand National championship. Jarrett and Hutcherson traded the points lead five times
Saturday, January 10, 2009, 10:28 AM EST
[General]
In the earliest days of stock car racing, horsepower was king. The bigger and badder the engine, the better the driver's chances were of winning and dominating races. However, in spite of the fact that several competing engines were more advanced, the aerodynamic and low-slung Hudson Hornet managed to win in 1951, 1952, and 1953 with a 308 cu. in. (5.0 L) inline 6-cylinder that used an old-style flathead engine, proving there was more to winning than just a more powerful engine. In 1950, the "NASCAR Grand National Circuit" became the new title for the previous year's "Strictly Stock" racing division. Entering its second season, NASCAR's Strictly Stock late-model division is renamed the "Grand National" division because, NASCAR president Bill France explains, "Grand National indicates superior qualities." Though only eight Strictly Stock races were staged in 1949, this newfangled late-model racing circuit was already a hot commodity. It became NASCAR's number-one series, replacing the Modifieds as the headlining attraction.
Automobile manufacturers began to take notice, and with accelerated research and mechanical development, were producing more powerful passenger cars with high-compression, lightweight V-8 engines for the public. The first manufacturer to really invest in NASCAR's Grand National Circuit was the Nash Motor Company. The company offered cash prizes as contingency money in a few races and promised to deliver a new Nash to the 1950 NASCAR Grand National champion. At the time, it typically took three years for a new design of car body or engine to end up in production and be available for NASCAR racing. Most cars sold to the public did not have a wide variety of engine choices, and the majority of the buying public at the time were not interested in the large displacement special edition engine options that would soon become popular. However, the end of the Korean War in 1953 started an economic boom, and then car buyers immediately began demanding more powerful engines, again.
The 1950 title chase was quite memorable. In the 19-race campaign, the points lead changed hands nine times among seven different drivers. Bill Rexford took the points lead in the next-to-last race at Winchester, Ind., and finished 110.5 points ahead of Roberts. Roberts, the 21-year-old youngster out of Daytona Beach, could have won the title with a fifth-place finish in the season finale. With Rexford on the sidelines, Fireball elected to charge to the front rather than employ a conservative approach. Roberts led twice for nine laps, but blew the engine in his Oldsmobile and wound up 21st. In addition to Rexford and Roberts, other drivers to lead the standings during the season included Curtis Turner, Lloyd Moore, Tim Flock, Red Byron, and Harold Kite. The following chart compiles the complete standings for 1950.
The 1955 NASCAR Grand National season was pivotal for the future of NASCAR. It started when Mercury Outboard magnate Carl Kiekhaefer appeared virtually overnight with a powerful Chrysler 300. He brought the car to Daytona without a driver, but Tim Flock, who quit NASCAR in 1954 after he was disqualified from the Daytona victory, was the logical choice. A deal was struck, and Flock won the 1955 Daytona race in his first start with Kiekhaefer. During the 1955 NASCAR championship season, Flock won 18 races and Kiekhaefer Chryslers won 22 of the 39, dominating the championship by 1,508 points in front of runner-up Buck Baker, but he didn't take the points lead until the 33rd race of the season in mid August. Flock's record of 18 wins wasn't surpassed until 1967 when Richard Petty won 27 races. Consistent Lee Petty led the points standings most of the season, but was no match for the determined Flock, who drove the powerful Kiekhaefer Chryslers. Petty's consistency kept him on top of the points standings, but he tapered off in the second half of the season. Petty won six races and wound up third in the final standings.
By late 1955, GM and Ford were pulling out all the stops to derail the Kiekhaefer/Chrysler express. The big showdown came at Darlington's Southern 500, NASCAR's premier superspeedway race and, to date, the only 500-miler. The battle of the Big Three manufacturers so captured the fancy of Southern racing fans that a frenzied peak of anticipation grew each day. All of the Darlington race grandstand seats were sold out more than 24 hours in advance, as Herb Thomas won the race driving a Chevrolet. 1957 saw several notable events happen; chief among them, the AMA banned manufacturers from using race wins in their advertising and giving direct support to race teams, as they felt it led to reckless street racing. This forced manufacturers to become creative in producing race parts to help racers win. Race teams were often caught trying to use factory produced racing parts that were not really available to the public, though many parts passed muster by being labeled as heavy-duty "Police" parts. Car manufacturers wanted to appear compliant with the ban, but they also wanted to win.
NASCAR tracks at the time were mainly dirt tracks with modest barriers, and during the 1957 season a Mercury Monterey crashed into the crowd. This killed many spectators, and resulted in a serious overhaul of the safety rules, which in turn prompted the building of larger more modern tracks. Also in 1957, Chevrolet sold enough of their new fuel injected engines to the public in order to make them available for racing (and Ford began selling superchargers as an option), but Bill France immediately banned fuel injection and superchargers from NASCAR before they could race. However, even without official factory support or the use of fuel injection, Buck Baker won the championship in 1957 driving a small-block V-8 Chevy Bel-Air throughout the 50-race season. Lee Petty dominated much of the 1958 championship season, driving an Oldsmobile and winning by 644 points in a 50-race season over Buck Baker. The season also marked what would become the first of many milestones in a young Richard Petty's long and storied NASCAR career by starting his first race on July 18, 1958 in the 100-lap race at Toronto's Canadian National Exposition Speedway. The 21-year-old Petty finishes 17th in the 19-car field after hitting the fence on the 55th lap. The 1959 NASCAR Grand National season was full of excitement as the very first Daytona 500 was held on a massive new, 2.5-mile speedway in Daytona Beach. The Feb. 22 show turned out to be better than a Hollywood production. For 500 miles, devoid of a single caution period, America's finest machinery battled around the new Daytona Inter national Speedway in dizzying fashion. Speeds were alarming -- certainly faster than any stock car had gone and within a whisker of the top speeds turned at Indy.
In the late stages, the race boiled down to a three-car struggle between Lee Petty's Oldsmobile, Johnny Beauchamp's Thunderbird, and Joe Weatherly's Chevy. The finish was so close Bill France stepped in to announce the results were "unofficial" until all available evidence could be studied in the form of photos and film. After 61 hours, Lee Petty was declared the official winner, by about one foot. Petty averaged 135.521 mph, 33 mph faster than any other NASCAR Grand National race.
The Daytona 500 was an electric success that generated more publicity than any other stock car race to that point in history. A trackside audience of 41,921 watched as NASCAR stock car racing was about to venture into a whole new chapter of ultrafast superspeedways, ushering in the Golden Age of stock car racing.
If the United
States Government is expecting a jump-start in the economy just because we will
have new legislators in place to pass more open-ended laws, full of loopholes,
then the new incoming administration has grossly underestimated the problem
with America's infrastructure.
So many jobs
that required a certain artisanship, or skilled trade, have been shipped
overseas and outsourced to save on labor costs, that the U.S. is left with a
glut of tradesmen with general skills and knowledge, but very few really good
artisans left. Ask anyone over the
age of 40 how long it used to take to complete a construction project, and you
probably won't believe their answers.
It used to be
an understood practice that construction crews would have to work hard and do a
great (not good, but great) job, as quickly as possible, so that the company could add to
their reputation and secure that next contract. Workers were excellent craftsmen, and they knew how to work
hard to get the job done safely and efficiently. Pay was scaled in favor of tradesmen who were experienced
and skilled, not for just showing up and turning a flag for $15/hour. Workers took pride in what they did and
still marvel at their accomplishments.
As evidence,
just look at some of these marvels of American construction and look at the
time it took to build these structures:
the Empire State Building took 1.5 years to complete, Hoover Dam took 4
years, Grand Coulee Dam took 8.5 years, the Mackinac Bridge took 3.5 years, the
original World Trade Center took 7 years.
Even the Brooklyn Bridge, which took 13 years to complete in 1883, has
withstood the test of time for over 100 years.
Compare that
to the "Big Dig" project in Boston, which broke ground in 1991 and officially
was completed in 2007 to the tune of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982
dollars) spent in federal and state tax dollars as of 2006. A July 17, 2008
article in The Boston Globe stated, "In all, the project will cost an additional $7
billion in interest, bringing the total to a staggering $22 billion, according
to a Globe review of hundreds of pages of state documents. It will not be paid
off until 2038." Couple this
with the fact that there were thousands of leaks in the tunnel and a section of
concrete fell and killed a woman, thus prompting the Governor to close the
tunnel down for an additional three years to fix the problems caused by shoddy
workmanship, and you have the epitome of what is wrong with the industrial and
construction sector in the United States.
How did we go
from building marvelous, monstrous structures that have withstood the test of
time for over 100 years, to simple construction projects that cannot be
complete on schedule, and/or within their allotted budgets?
There is
construction project going on near Indianapolis, right now, that has just asked
for a three-month extension for a project that has already taken over a year to
alter a half-mile section of road.
It is way over budget and has been a thorn in the side to many residents
for far too long, already, but now the project manager has groveled to the city
council begging for an extension due to unforeseen obstacles and delays. And lets not forget that all of this
will cost more money, too.
Construction
companies and project managers have bastardized the system to purposely
lengthen projects to run into each other, so that they can keep their labor
forces constantly employed. This
practice minimizes having to hire and train new employees for each job and it
keeps a constant stream of money flowing through the respective company. Specialized jobs are outsourced, and
construction workers are paid handsomely for their trouble, including shortened
work schedules, extra time off (paid of course), and even benefits with some
companies.
New laws have
been passed to protect construction workers on highways, yet the workers
continue to perform unsafe practices, like hopping over barriers in front of
oncoming traffic, thinking the new laws protecting them are also some sort of
invincibility cloak that allows them to flaunt stupidity in the face of common
sense. No additional safety
training is required of these construction crews, and in many cases the workers
do not even speak English, so they have no way of knowing what the company's
policies and procedures concerning safe practices really are to begin with.
If America is
going to bounce out of this economic funk we are currently in, then Congress is
going to have to do something about the terrible practices of construction
companies and the lack of skilled labor in our workforce. Wages that are currently assigned to
general laborers should be reserved for skilled artisans, only. This serves as incentive for the
general laborer to either become skilled or to seek out higher education. Either way, that person will be the
better for it. It is an absolute
travesty in this country, that a construction laborer, truck driver, or
dockworker can start out making more money than a skilled professional like a
teacher. America's priorities and
her compensation base are terribly skewed. It's no wonder we're in the mess we're in.
With the 2008 season at a close, and Daytona just over a month away, I thought this might be a good time for an evolutionary look at the "stock car" through history. So, here is the first installment in a series entitled, The Evolution of the Stock Car. A stock car, in the original sense of the term, described an automobile that has not been modified from its original factory configuration. Later the term stock car came to mean any production-based automobile used in racing. This term is used to differentiate such a car from a racecar, a special, custom-built car designed only for racing purposes. The cars have adopted larger spoilers so that the air passes smoothly over the car to provide a larger downforce over the back of the vehicle to prevent the car from flipping over. All cars have this spoiler. When NASCAR was first formed by Bill France, Sr. in 1948 to regulate stock car racing in the U.S., there was a requirement that any car entered be made entirely of parts available to the general public through automobile dealers. Additionally, the cars had to be models that had sold more than 500 units to the public. This is referred to as "homologation".
In NASCAR's early years, the cars were so "stock" that it was commonplace for the drivers to drive themselves to the competitions in the car that they were going to run in the race. While automobile engine technology had remained fairly stagnant in World War II, advanced aircraft piston engine development had provided a great deal of available data, and NASCAR was formed just as some the improved technology was about to become available in production cars.
Before NASCAR was founded in the 1920s, moonshine runners during the prohibition era would often have to outrun the authorities. To do so, they had to upgrade their vehicles and eventually started getting together with fellow runners and making runs together. They would challenge one another and eventually progressed to organized events in the early 1930s. The main problems racers faced was the lack of a unified set of rules among the different tracks, and that the racers could not race at different tracks because it was not legal for them to do so. When Bill France saw this problem he set up a meeting at the Streamline Hotel in order to form an organization that would unify the rules. From this meeting NASCAR was founded in 1948.
The 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket V-8 with a displacement of 303 cu.in. is widely recognized as the first postwar modern overhead valve (OHV) engine to become available to the public, though all the major manufacturers were also in the process of modernizing their engine designs. The Oldsmobile was an immediate success in 1949 and 1950, and all the automobile manufacturers could not help noticing that its victories resulted in noticeably higher sales of the Oldsmobile 88 to the buying public. The motto of the day became "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday".
However, in spite of the fact that several competing engines were more advanced, the aerodynamic and low-slung Hudson Hornet managed to win in 1951, 1952, and 1953 with a 308 cu.in. (5.0 L) inline 6-cylinder that used an old-style flathead engine, proving there was more to winning than just a more powerful engine. Cars were typically either driven to the track or "flat-towed" behind pick-ups and family sedans. Other than tweaking and tuning of the engine, nothing could be done to these early Strictly Stock cars (sort of like NASCAR mandates today, isn't it?). The window glass front, back and sides was intact. Ropes and aircraft harnesses were used as seat belts. Roll bars -- which were mandated in 1952 -- were neither required nor often installed.
One thing the strictly stock designation encouraged was a great diversity of manufacturers on the track (exactly the opposite of today's homogeneous tendencies). The first official Strictly Stock Division race had nine makes come to the line, including Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford, Hudson, Kaiser, Lincoln, Mercury and Oldsmobile.
Some of the biggest problems were tire, wheel, and suspension failures brought on by stresses that were atypical of normal road use. These concerns brought about some "not-so-stock" inventions, such as one detailed by two-time Grand National (forerunner of Winston Cup) champion Tim Flock, who described a trap door in the floorboard of his race car that he could open with a chain to check right front tire wear, "When the white cord was showing, we had about one or two laps left before the tire would blow," said Flock of the 'early-warning system.' Due to the rough-surfaced dirt tracks that were predominant in the early days of the sport, the only modification that was allowed was a reinforcing steel plate on the right front wheel to prevent lug nuts from pulling through the rims on conventional wheels. Otherwise, racing stock cars in the early days of the sport was very much a seat of the pants endeavor. But, it was the ingenuity and the indomitable spirit of these early racers that made NASCAR what it is today. Just think of what NASCAR might be like today, if some of the rules, which currently govern the sport, were turned back to those employed in the 1940's and 50's. While there is much to be said for the modern safety efforts of NASCAR, there is also something about 9 different makes and model of cars, employing the ingenuity and imagination of mechanics and crew chiefs and letting them all cut loose in a battle for supremacy. Can you smell the octane, yet?
* Many thanks to wikipedia and NASCAR.com for much of the data for this article.
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