NASCAR Then and Now - Ben White [22]
Our own legendary NASCAR photographer, Nigel Kinrade, was in the right place at the right time when Ryan Newman’s Penske Racing Dodge took flight at the 2003 Daytona 500. Newman’s machine became airborne after hitting the wall and veering into the infield. The car dug into the grass, allowing air to get underneath, which sent the car flying and rolling in a heap of mangled parts. The Dodge’s roll cage protected Newman, who crawled out of the car after suffering only minor injuries.
Two years after Jack Smith’s off-track excursion, Johnny Allen did the same during the 1960 Rebel 300 at Darlington. This wreck could have been a tragedy, as Allen’s car tore through the scorer’s stand (the scaffolding that can be seen at left) on its way off the track. Track photographer Tom Kirkland explained what happened in his book Darlington International Raceway 1950–1967: “Fortunately, the sun was shining in the end that the car hit. So, all the scorers who had been in that section had moved down to the shady end. No one was sitting where the scorer’s stand crumpled. And no one was hurt. Johnny Allen walked away.”
Communication
For decades, pit-to-driver communication was mostly a one-way street and consisted of a simple hand-held chalkboard that conveyed instructions about when to pit and queried the driver on car performance for upcoming pit stop adjustments. The benefits of two-way radio communication were obvious from the start, but it took several decades for the technology to catch up to the idea. Jack Smith tried equipping his car with an old ham radio at the 1960 World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, but the tubes jostled loose under all the high-speed vibrations. In 1973 Bobby Allison modified a citizens’ band (CB) radio with speakers inside his helmet, but reception was spotty. By the 1980s, the sport had worked out most of the bugs, and today’s teams rely heavily on two-way communication between the driver, the pits, and the spotters watching the action from high above. Radios have added an extra element for the media and fans, who get to listen in on conversations during the race.
Delano Wood of the Wood Brothers team asks David Pearson a question during a race at North Carolina Motor Speedway in 1978. Drivers also used hand signals to communicate with the pits. For example, when the car was loose and on the edge of spinning out of control, drivers would pat the top of the car. When it was tight and hard to steer, they would touch the top of the driver’s door.
The headset worn by crew chief Pat Tryson allows him to communicate with his driver, his spotter, the team garage, and NASCAR officials. The earpieces also protect the crew members’ ears from the deafening roar of 40-plus 800-horsepower race engines.
Pit Stops
Few elements of a NASCAR race demonstrate the sport’s evolution from an amateur pastime to a professional world- class sport like pit stops. Pit stops weren’t even part of the equation in the early days, as the typical short track event was limited to about one hundred miles. But speedways allowed the cars to run significantly longer distances, requiring stops for refueling, tire changes, and mechanical adjustments.
The pit stops of the 1950s were measured in minutes, not seconds. Jacks were heavy and cumbersome, tires were hard to manage, and in-race handling adjustments were pretty much unheard of. But racing is always about going faster than the other guy, and over timve the sport’s innovators came up with more and more ways to shave time off their pit stops. For example, crewmen struggled to get lugs on wheel studs until the mid-1960s, when the Wood Brothers began gluing the lugs straight on to the rims, saving precious seconds, if not minutes, with each tire change. Today, NASCAR’s dedicated pit crews can change four tires, refuel, and make chassis adjustments in less than 13 seconds.
No one appears to be in too big of a hurry as they work on Dick Rathmann’s Hudson Hornet during