Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Rick Mast: NASCAR Better Not Slow These Cars Down Just Because They're Flipping!

Transcript

Rick Mast: NASCAR Better Not Slow These Cars Down Just Because They're Flipping! · Kenny Wallace Media

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  Hi everybody. Coming to you from Rick's trophy
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  room this week. Not a lot of neat stuff in this
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  trophy room we're going to talk about.
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  I'm going to touch touch on a subject that's hot right now and
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  that's these cars flying in the air, getting up in the air,
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  getting there under them, get flipping and all that.
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  Couple things is irritated me a little bit about that.
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  So the cars are flying in there, there is getting under, they're
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  getting up, they're flipping. We saw all that at Daytona.
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  Everybody's got an opinion about it.
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  So you know, quickly if we go back 80s, whatever, 7 or 888788
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  Bobby Allison gets in the fence at the start finish line at
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  Talladega. So the as the story goes, the,
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  the, the, the liability, the liability carriers, insurance
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  companies with NASCAR said we can't have this car is getting
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  in the grandstands. Of course we all know we can't
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  have that. So also the story goes at
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  somehow another 200 miles an hour was was the magic number
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  that they put on this thing that the cars couldn't go over.
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  Whether all that's true or not, I don't know.
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  I'm just telling you that that was a story that we've all heard
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  for years. So what happened, France, Billy
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  Junior had slowed the cars down. And believe me, the last thing
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  this dude wanted to do was put restricted plates on race cars
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  and slow them down. But you know, because I guess
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  again, because of insurance, we had to do that.
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  Now, all through the years, we fought this and fought it at
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  Talladega Daytona. You know what it started doing?
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  It started getting us in a big pack.
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  I remember early on at Talladega, we were running too
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  wide and I, I looked in the mirror and I saw somebody coming
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  and looked like up through the middle.
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  And all of a sudden that car went by me.
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  I was on the inside lane. Whoever's on the outside, this
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  car split us and went between US.
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  And I watched this dude go all the way to the front of the pack
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  by himself in the third, in the 2nd lane or the middle lane that
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  nobody was in that we had never discovered before.
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  And the guy's name is Billy Standridge, if anybody remembers
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  that name. And I remember thinking, damn,
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  what's this all about? Well, the first thing, you know,
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  everybody figured that out. So now we're running three wide,
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  deep as you could go from the front, from the front to the
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  back. And I remember when the race was
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  over, thinking, damn, what was that?
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  What was that about? Then the next week, I'll never
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  forget Dale Jarrett came to him and he said, Rick.
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  I said, yeah. He said, man, have you ever
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  experienced anything like what we went through last week with
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  that three wide stuff? I said no, first time for me,
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  Dale, and he said first time for me too, Rick.
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  From that moment forward, that's what we've had at these places.
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  The plates have made these tracks are these races, you
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  know, tight like that, three wide and all that, all that
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  stuff. But anyhow, the, what I'm going
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  to take issue with a little bit is I heard a couple of the
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  journalists or people that comment on our sport for the
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  media suggesting that maybe, maybe we didn't slow the cars
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  down. All right.
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  And one of me went so far as to say, you know, 20 or 30 miles an
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  hour, need to slow down 20 or 30 miles an hour.
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  I can't tell the difference. I don't see the difference in
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  that. Well, maybe you can't, but I
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  can. 20 or 30 miles an hour. Yes, you can tell that.
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  You you'll know that. And it's not just the speed, but
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  it's like an overall feeling you'll get now, three or four
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  miles an hour, 5 miles an hour. Yeah.
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  I I can't see it. You can't see it.
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  Fans can't see it, but this notion of slowing down 20 or 30
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  miles an hour, no, you know, was it Hemingway?
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  Was it Hemingway made the famous quote, the only true sports or
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  mountain climbing, bull riding and auto racing.
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  And I guess that was made probably he probably made that
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  quote in the 60s maybe I don't know when auto racing was very,
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  very, very dangerous. So we losing so many lives
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  fighting a bull. I am, I'm not getting in a ring
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  with a bull and fighting that thing.
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  Mountain climbing, No, I don't think I'm going to do that.
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  But anyhow, well, I think what he meant by that there, there's
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  a fear factor in these things and auto racing, there's always
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  been a fear factor. And I think, well, I don't, I
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  don't think I know part of the lure of our sport is the fear of
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  of what these drivers are putting themselves in for,
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  right? If you're a race car driver,
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  man, you know what you're signing up for.
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  Now, granted, it's this, this thing is safer now than it's
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  ever been. The guys, you know, they're
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  doing all this wrecking. They're not really getting hurt
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  much any longer other than, you know, the, the head deal with
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  Kirk, Kirk, Kurt and the other dude.
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  But anyhow, they're they're you know, it's safer.
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  It's the safest it's ever been. And and we've taken by doing
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  that. Maybe you take a little bit of
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  the fear factor out for for the for the fans that's watching it.
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  I don't know. But if you're a race car driver,
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  you accept this, you know, when you get in that race car, then
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  you might not come back or you might get hurt.
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  I mean, and believe me, it's nothing fun about getting upside
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  down in these race cars, especially these big racers,
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  man, you're, you're listening to, you're hearing this from a
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  guy that did it right. I was on the roof at Talladega
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  at 204 miles an hour. Believe me, there's nothing fun
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  about that. You know, you're riding along
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  upside down. You're like, you realize it
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  seems like an eternity, but it's only a few short seconds.
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  You realize that you have no control over anything.
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  I mean, there's nothing in your life in that moment that you
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  control, right? It's totally in God's hands or
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  the safety's hands or whatever you want to look at it, you
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  know, and however you end up. So race car drivers know this.
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  If there is ever a race car driver that said we need to slow
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  the cars down, I don't want that race car driver to be
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  representing my sport, right? That's not the mentality to
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  have. That's not the right mentality.
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  I don't care if somebody wants to take issue with that, fine,
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  take issue with it. But you know, part of being a
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  race car driver is accepting the fact that you can't get hurt.
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  I mean, when you y'all, y'all have seen this quote many times
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  to me guys, if you race them, you're going to wreck them.
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  If you wreck them, sometimes it hurts and sometimes you get
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  hurt, right? And then sometimes it's even
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  worse than that. But having lived through that in
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  my era with broken bones, concussions, shoulder, all kinds
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  of stuff, right? You know, you, you accept that,
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  you go on again. Right now, the cars are safe.
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  They're safer than they've ever been.
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  To keep the cars down. This is all about keeping the
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  cars out of the grandstands. We know that, we understand
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  that. We respect that.
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  We accept that the the the fences at these tracks that
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  we've shown that they seem to withstand or will hold these
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  cars in the race tracks now like Austin Dilla did.
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  It was it Newman, somebody? I don't know.
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  It's been four or five of these cars up in these sketch fences
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  now and they just spit them back out on the racetrack, which is a
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  good thing. But I'm, I'm just, I'm just
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  saying I'm, I'm afraid we don't, we don't need to unfair our
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  sport. But I don't mean that fans go to
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  watch crashes and people get hurt.
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  That's not what this is about. I don't think most fans for the
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  most part, don't want to see guys get hurt.
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  They just don't. You see action.
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  You see if somebody does have a bad crash, it's going to happen.
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  And that that adds to the excitement of our sport.
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  Again, auto racing, one of the appeals is the fear factor.
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  There's no way out of that. If you go to Daytona, are you
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  going to slow me down 30 miles an hour?
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  You take 30 miles an hour away from them or 20 miles an hour
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  right now and go to Daytona and sit in the grandstands and watch
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  it. I'm telling you right now, you
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  won't have those same people come back to the next race
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  because it is not the same. It's not not something you sit
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  there and think, wow, they're going 30 miles an hour slower.
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  You're not saying that. You're saying when they come by
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  you and you look at them go by, you're like, damn, that What's
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  so special about this? You know, this big old track and
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  they're just lumbering by. No, dude, when they come back,
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  when those race cars come back as a fan, your breath has to be
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  taken away. We saw a video, we've seen
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  videos of people standing clear the near the fence at at some of
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  these large tracks when they come out of the first lap,
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  especially the first time fans and the cars come back at such a
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  tremendous amount of speed and the air and the noise and these
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  guy, these people do they just get blown back they're like
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  crap. What was that all about right?
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  You cannot take that away from our sport.
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  You you just can't do it. If anybody thinks that you can
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  do that and still have the same appeal, I'm telling you, it's
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  not going to be, it's just not going to happen again.
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  It's a feeling. It's a feeling you have when
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  you're at this event and, you know, for the for the people
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  that follow our sport are the people that write a report on
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  our sport to, to come up with these things.
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  Yeah, I understand. You're, you're you're you're
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  thinking about what to do to keep the cars on the racetrack.
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  Well, guess what? Cars are going to get up if if
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  you wreck you, I mean, if you race, you're going to wreck,
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  right? And sometimes when you get
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  sideways and, and things get just right, you're going to
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  flip, you're going to get up in the air.
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  Air is going to get under your car.
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  I don't give a darn what NASCAR does.
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  They've they've, they've done so many things right now that, that
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  the cars for the most part, stay on the ground better than
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  they've ever done in our history, right?
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  When I got sideways, we didn't have roof flaps, right?
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  Not even sure we had a window lift.
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  I don't know what we have Anyhow, I just got sideways,
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  went up in the air, right. And then then the wreck started.
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  But but you know, you just sometimes guys, you just got to
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  accept the facts. The facts are racing is a
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  dangerous sport and you have to accept that, right?
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  Again, we don't want to get we don't want them getting up in
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  the grandstands. But they've already said 200
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  miles an hour is there is is a magic number.
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  We're keeping them at 200 or under.
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  You can't slow them down more. Hell, these poor drivers right
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  now, they're running half some of these race tracks almost wide
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  open because we've got them choked down so bad.
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  I mean, they're doing it. Atlanta is now a mini Talladega,
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  a mini Daytona, right? You go to some of these places
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  go like Texas, they're just barely getting out of the gas.
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  You take more speed out of them and they're they're going to be
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  holding wide open at half the tracks to go to.
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  And that's not good for racing. It's not good for the drivers.
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  The drivers hate it. You can't, you know, there's no,
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  there's no acceleration acceleration.
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  Your car won't pull up and won't do things.
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  You know, you just can't do that.
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  You cannot take but so much speed out of these race cars and
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  and expect to have the appeal that that that, that that makes
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  this this sport of our NASCAR sport of ours, NASCAR or any
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  racing for that matter, so important or so exciting, right,
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  right. You just it, it's just not
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  you're not going to do it. I mean, again, if you're a
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  driver, you want to slow them down, man, go go buy groceries
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  at Walmart. Do don't do go do something
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  else. Don't don't be involved with
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  this. If you're if you're a follower
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  of our sport and you report on our sport, right?
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  Think about what I'm telling you.
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  Think about, you know what, maybe Rick has got a point.
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  We don't need to slow these cars down, but we do need to keep
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  them safe. And and then with all that being
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  said, you've got to accept the fact the cars are going to
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  frigate, get up in the air. They'll do everything they can
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  and they're doing it right now to keep them on the racetrack,
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  keep them down. But racing's racing.
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  If you take all the fear out of it, it's gone.
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  It's not going to be relevant any longer.
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  So anyhow, that's my take on that.