Mike Mulhern

Saturday, August 02, 2008

GM’s Pat Suhy listens to Toyota’s Lee White engine diss, and dishes it right back

Montreal last summer was warm and sunny for NASCAR racers...this time around, though, it was rain—and rain tires!? (Photo Credit: Elsa/Getty Images for NASCAR)

By Mike Mulhern

Horsepower, horsepower, who’s got the horsepower?

Lee White, the Toyota racing boss, says his teams are getting a raw deal from NASCAR with that horsepower-cutting engine rules change 10 days ago, and he castigates NASCAR for making the change and he rips Chevrolet for pushing for the new rule.

However GM’s Pat Suhy says White “doth protest too much,” and Suhy says Toyota, even after the change, still has more horsepower.

And Suhy says he suspects Toyota ‘fudged’ on that Chicago engine dyno, downplaying just how big an engine edge Toyota does have.

Suhy, Chevrolet’s group manager for NASCAR, says facts are facts, and Toyota has indeed had more horsepower to work with the past year and a half in NASCAR’s Nationwide series. And Suhy says even with the new rule Toyota still has about a five horsepower edge over Chevrolet on that tour….so he will be anxious to see what happens next week when the NASCAR tour hits Michigan International Speedway.

Now is this really the way to finish a race? How much money would you pay for a ticket to this? NASCAR is on a roll....but the wrong way.
(Ron Fellows, driver of the GoDaddy.com Chevrolet sits in line during a red flag delay at the NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 Montreal presented by Dodge on August 2, 2008 at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.) (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Of course, with $4 a gallon gas, maybe Daytona and Detroit should be looking at miles per gallon as much as miles per hour.

Suhy says he and his men are ready for the ecological challenge…though Suhy says ‘alternative fuels’ may be the better way to look at the issue.

“There are some racing series that ration fuel….But, hey, think about the performance of a NASCAR engine – making 700 horsepower and still getting five miles per gallon….compared to street cars that make 400 horsepower and get only 10 mpg,” Suhy says. “Consider that, we do pretty good in NASCAR.

“Rather than looking at miles per gallon, we’re looking at alternative fuels for racing, how to do alternative fuel. Like ethanol.

“So instead of mpg, let’s look at it from another perspective – how can we impact how much oil we use?

“For the Indy 500 we had an E-85 engine Corvette as the pace car, for example.”

(And so why a regular gas-guzzling Corvette for the Brickyard 400?)

NASCAR may need a much better rainy-day game plan than it had at Montreal. NASCAR teams still don’t know how to race in the rain, and it shows. (A member of the Fastenal Dodge team prepares rain tires during the NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 Montreal presented by Dodge on August 2, 2008 at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.) (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images for NASCAR)

GM, particularly high exec Brent Dewar, has been pushing E-85 passenger vehicles—85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline – for several years

Now Suhy says GM is ready to put E-85 engines in its NASCAR stockers, whenever the Daytona-Charlotte sanctioning body gives the okay.

Indeed, NASCAR executives has long dodged the question of why does NASCAR keep letting the manufacturers improve engine designs and create more horsepower, when the sport – and its fans – might be better served with engines with less horsepower.

“Do people want to see drivers going into the turn at Indy at 210 mph or 180 mph? “ Suhy asks rhetorically—to make the point that racing side-by-side at slower corner speeds would make for a better show for the fans.

Jacques Villeneuve, in a Toyota, returns to NASCAR action in Montreal...but can he make it stick on the other side of the border (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

NASCAR and Detroit did study new, smaller, lower-horsepower engines a few years ago, but after extensive study and discussion, the project was shelved.

“When we were all discussing ‘the engine of the future’ a few years ago, we were looking at 600 horsepower engines, with fewer cubic inches,” Suhy says.

“They wound up putting it on the shelf, saying ‘We have it, if we ever need it.’”

Engine legend Robert Yates started pushing NASCAR for smaller, less powerful engines back in 1994, but the sanctioning body has ignored the issue generally.

Now Suhy says GM is offering a different tack: “We have been developing an E-85 NASCAR Cup racing engine, which we plan to share with NASCAR. We’ve been racing that in our Corvette this year.

“There is an issue of materials-compatibility, rubber seals and aluminum parts in the carburetor (because ethanol is somewhat corrosive). But we make E-85 engines of every variety for the street, so our guys know how to make it work.

“There would be issues to study, like we did when we went to unleaded fuel – looking at valve seats and lower end bearings.

“But we think we can put a package together that would be as durable as the current NASCAR engine.”

And Suhy says an E-85 changeover could be implemented very quickly in NASCAR, if the go-ahead were given: “We’re confident it’s something we could do in fairly short-order. Maybe not in four-to-six weeks, but probably 12 weeks, or half-a-year turnaround time.”

That might be an excellent PR move for the sport.

The beautiful Montreal skyline, as Toyota’s David Reutimann leads Chevrolet’s Ron Hornaday Jr. during practice for Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide race (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

However the current issue under debate is the Toyota engine, which in its Nationwide configuration, is flat kicking butt.

The line has been that, because Toyota has more horsepower, its teams can put more downforce in the Toyotas stockers to help them go into the corners better.

Toyota’s horsepower tends to come at higher RPM, at the end of the straights, while NASCAR Chevrolet teams have traditionally pushed hard to get engine power at low RPM for more punch up off the corners. In fact last year Toyota men were criticized, lampooned even, for going the wrong way on their RPM curve engine design, when Toyota teams appeared so far off the pace.

But this year Toyota’s smarts are evident – the car-of-tomorrow this season has maybe only half the downforce of last year’s big-track stockers, so any little extra bit of downforce into the corners is a big boost.

He who laughs last….

“When you have more horsepower you can make those tradeoffs,” Suhy says. “If you can go through the turns better because you’ve got more horsepower, then you can afford to give up speed on the straightaways (downforce helps in the corners, but it becomes speed-cutting drag on the straights). That gives you an edge over the guys (with less horsepower) who have flare their fenders in (to cut straightaway drag) just to keep up on the straights, because they can’t go into the turns as fast.

“Fundamentally we knew we were behind with our SB2 engine (a 10-year-old design) against their stuff…that we would be down on horsepower. Not that we were behind but that the rules that made us run the SB2 (instead of the much newer R07 engine) kept us behind.

“And we suffered the same last year too—but the difference this year is now Toyota has some great teams and drivers.”

That is Joe Gibbs’ bunch: Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano, and crew chief Dave Rogers.

And going into Saturday’s Montreal race (where Chevrolet teams were favored) Toyota teams had won 15 of the Nationwide tour’s 22 events.

“So we’ve been lobbying NASCAR for the better part of a year to let us run our R07 engine in Nationwide, so that architecturally we would be on the same playing ground as Toyota,” Suhy says.

If NASCAR executives are bailing out of their Mexico City venture, after just four years, why should anyone take NASCAR’s international ‘push’ seriously? Jacques Villeneuve, here, would like to know (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

After increasing complaints about Toyota’s rampaging through all three NASCAR series this year, and after Toyota drivers swept four of the top five spots at Chicago three weeks ago, NASCAR took Chicago engines, about a dozen, after that race back to Charlotte for dyno tests. And a few days later NASCAR changed the Nationwide rules to cut Toyota engines by about 15 horsepower.

White insists the data from those tests are not nearly as conclusive as the rule might indicate.

Suhy, however, says that Toyota may have been fudging in the tests, in a sense. “Looking at those dyno tests—and look at the ‘average’ horsepower (under the RPM-increase-over-time curve), rather that peaks, because you race ‘average,’ not peak – the best was David Reutimann’s (he finished fifth in the 300), the second best was (winner) Kyle Busch,” Suhy says.

“And when Kyle did his victory burnout, well, we know that burnouts are a good way to kill horsepower. So the number he ran (on the dyno), well, he was probably really better than Reutimann.

“And Tony Stewart (who finished ninth in Chicago) either missed a shift or over-revved in that race.

“So on the race track we feel Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart had the best engines….but we’ll never know for sure.

“But based on the tests themselves, Chevrolet was third-best. We were 20 horsepower off the Toyotas across the power-band.

“And we’ve seen the new rule as cutting horsepower from 12 to 16….so Toyota should still have an advantage.

“I don’t know if we’ll see it on the Montreal road course, because so many other things go into effect on a road course. But I think we’ll see its effect clearly at Michigan next week.”

Rainy rooster-tails cover the Montreal field as Ford’s Marcos Ambrose (#59 STP) takes the lead from Scott Pruett on the restart after a rain delay during Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide 200 in Montreal at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. But it’s unfair for NASCAR to put underbudgeted Nationwide teams under such a financial gun as having to race in the rain. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images for NASCAR)

White says, because of this rules change, NASCAR should now mandate that Chevrolet run its R07 on the Nationwide series.

Suhy says “That’s fine with us.”

So the next move in this mini-drama is up to NASCAR.

A complicating factor – Ford and Dodge.

Ford’s Jack Roush has been reluctant to push a new engine, given the financial difficulties in Detroit and the expense involved from $8 million to $12-million-plus.

However Dodge already has a new generation NASCAR engine, though Dodge teams haven’t done much with it, surprisingly.

Roush and Doug Yates have been designing a new Ford NASCAR, based loosely on the Toyota design, and it should be submitted soon. NASCAR executives have been pushing Roush to get the new engine out for review.

However, it appears Roush is not only disinclined to push hard for a new Cup engine, he’s also less than enthusiastic about a new Nationwide engine either…of course Carl Edwards has been doing quite nicely with the old motor.

A real world champion, Jacques Villeneuve wants to make the transition to NASCAR...but so far it’s been a fitful journey. So why? Is it time for NASCAR racing bosses to get in gear on this project, or are they going to bail on Montreal just as they bailed on Mexico City? (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

And Dodge? It had the sport’s state-of-the-art motor when it came into NASCAR in 2001 (so much so that NASCAR had to change the rules and take away its cylinder advantage). This season Dodge teams have had yet another brand new engine to work with, and it’s been baffling why Dodge teams have been so slow, reluctant even, to put that new engine on the track.

“That first Dodge engine was 45 years newer in design than our small block Chevy,” Suhy said. “That new Dodge set the new standard, actually defined the box you wanted to be in.

“So I don’t think Dodge’s new engine is going to be that much of an improvement as the R07 was compared to our SB2.”

However a new Dodge engine is certainly not a step backwards either.

Agree? Disagree? Don’t just brood. Express yourself here, and make your voice heard clearly in NASCAR headquarters in Daytona and Charlotte and in NASCAR race shops throughout North Carolina and the rest of the country.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions and insight, on this topic, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR. Any questions, just ask Mike at . And bookmark this page for continually updated NASCAR reports: http://independenttribune.net/index.php/sports/mulhern/

Richard Childress, who just donated $5 million to help launch a new medical program at Wake Forest University’s Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem NC, watches practice for Sunday’s Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway. But was Childress the triggerman for NASCAR’s new rule cutting Toyota horsepower? (Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Journal Readers Rant: On safety, Indy tires, the car-of-tomorrow, Ford, Toyota…and NASCAR!

If NASCAR is “Safety First,” then how to explain forcing drivers to race under conditions like this? NASCAR executives shouldn’t have backed themselves in a corner with Montreal and Pocono the same weekend. And the fans get cheated too.  (Stanton Barrett drives in the rain during the Montreal 200.) (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

By Mike Mulhern

Let’s open up the NASCAR mailbag and see what The Journal’s NASCAR readers are ranting about, in the wake of the Indianapolis Brickyard 400 tire debacle.
And we can’t wait to see what they have to say this week about Saturday’s rainy race in Montreal.....
...and what rebuttals NASCAR officials will surely have for each of these comments.

JL is really hot about the Indy fiasco:
“I spent $360 to take my family to this sham of a race. Never again.
“If Tony George and NASCAR had any guts, they would demand that Goodyear Corporation pay for refunds that should be given to every paying customer of this fraudulent event. There is precedent here. Refunds were issued after the Formula One race here a few years ago, and it’s the same situation now.
“Time to get your credibility back, NASCAR and IMS, and do what’s right.”

F5 says he’s had it:
“Someone’s head has got to roll for this one.  Robin “Mr. Sensitivity” Pemberton (NASCAR vice president for competition) would be my choice. 
“Sorry, but to me a disappointing race is one where your favorite is knocked out early, like Matt Kenseth for instance, or the race is weather delayed or shortened or where one team dominates to the exclusion of all others. 
“This race was beyond disappointing-- it was incompetence and pigheadedness masquerading as sound racing judgment on the part of NASCAR. 
“The folks in Stand C where I was sitting were openly mocking NASCAR and Goodyear and many walked out with half the race left.
“I drove 400 miles round trip to see a race, but instead I watched an event run like a circus, but run (by) the escaped inmates from the local insane asylum.
“Robin, this probably isn’t the first or last time you will hear this today but I am giving up my 6 tickets to the Brickyard.  I won’t be back to watch mediocre racing, sanctioned by incompetent officials and offered at premium prices.”

C, in North Carolina, is upset with NASCAR’s excuses:
“Don’t mean to sound so negative, but in the end it was NASCAR’s fault!
“No excuse for this type of problem. I could understand it if it was the first race at Indy, but running there since 1994!
“Main issue is their public relations with the fans. Mike Helton (NASCAR president) should, when he was on TV, give a full apology to the fans. Probably the ones in the stands had no clue what was going on!
“Their main concern was with teams, the egg on their face!
“They should at least give money or free tickets to the paying fans!
“There is no excuse for this. They had practiced before the event, and then had a week off; no mention about ‘big tire issues!’
“Maybe this would be a good time for NASCAR to fix its own problems, and get new competition directors! With debris cautions, COT, tire issues, horsepower restrictions, closing of tracks, green-white-yellow finishes, scoring loops finishes, etc, this group is the problem!”

M suggests the NASCAR competition department has some problems to deal with:
“The Pocono tires were at the Indy race track on Saturday night. If NASCAR officials were interested in avoiding problems they merely had to have every team switch to the Pocono tires before the race began.
“Only in NASCAR do you allow competitors to pit right before a competition yellow comes out, realize racers were taking advantage of it, and begin closing the pits so the rest of the competitors couldn’t get the same advantage that NASCAR already gave the others. Fair? NO. But another example (one of many) that there is a very serious lack of skill and knowledge in the competition department at NASCAR.”

Nothing wrong with racing in light rain, if you’ve got a good game plan and everyone is ready for it...but Saturday’s Montreal race looks like it was an international faux pas for NASCAR. Did NASCAR just use rain tires as a convenient excuse to get out of town? If NASCAR wants to race in the rain, it needs a serious rain plan.  (A view of the Senna curves at the start of the NASCAR Nationwide race in Montreal. (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

S in Florida says NASCAR should stop messing with Toyota: “NASCAR is making the biggest mistake they could ever make by cutting horsepower in the Toyota. Kyle Busch has brought more fans to the races and to their TV screens. If not for Kyle, I for sure would not be watching any races. Everywhere you go people are talking about ‘What a driver,’ and how mad some of the fans get when he wins...so they go to the next race to see if anyone can beat Kyle. He is the Big Ticket for NASCAR.”

B in Salt Lake City says the car-of-tomorrow needs serious review by NASCAR, and points out the new car has so much less downforce than the old car that it has created major tire problems:
“These tires are supposed to be harder than the 2001-2002 tire. That competition package was running 1400-pounds of downforce; the COT is running in the neighborhood of 600 pounds.
So we have added mechanical pressure to the right sides, increased the thrust load because of the flat track and removed the downforce that sets the tire and holds the car to the track.
This causes “skate.”
“The COT is also severely lacking in rear downforce, and this would induce wheel-spin.
“Between increased mechanical grip, skate and wheel-spin on the diamond-ground (Indianapolis) track, the tires were simply ground to dust.
“They could have had a quality control issue, but skate and wheel-spin were going to kill Indy.
“There may not be a solution for the COT. If you add downforce back, they might not be able to get sidewall strength to handle it...and even if they did, the bump-stops (on shocks, which keep a car from bottoming out) would prevent the car from turning.
“John Darby (NASCAR’s Cup tour director) is responsible for this mess and needs to be fired immediately. The COT needs to be abandoned, and Bridgestone needs to be the new tire supplier.”

S agrees that the car-of-tomorrow has some significant issues:
“So NASCAR has finally admitted that a big part of the problem is with the vaunted COT. 
“How much safer can a car really be if you can’t make it turn in a high-speed corner? 
“Every team in the garage has said the data from the ‘old’ car doesn’t apply to the new one...yet NASCAR depended on ‘what has happened before’ to assume things would be just fine at Indy? 
“I don’t know where NASCAR has their collective heads stuck, but it’s time to pull them out and do something to make the cars able to turn.  If that means changing the cars, or finally admitting they need wider/taller tires, then they need to do it. 
“It does make me wonder if Goodyear has ever said something to NASCAR that trying to make the same tire work for the Nationwide and Cup cars (the two types of cars have much different downforce characteristics) was a pipe dream to begin with.”

Another NASCAR fiasco? Racing in the rain in Montreal—NASCAR needs to go back to the drawing board. (A member of the CitiFinancial Ford team wheels tires back to the trailer in the rain following the NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 Montreal presented by Dodge on August 2, 2008 at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.) (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images for NASCAR)

D in Indiana has been following racing for years and worries now that NASCAR is on a downward slope:
“I have had the experience to witness racing up close and personal for nearly 5 decades.  I’ve seen open-wheel racing rise and fall and beginning to rise again.  I’ve seen Indiana, the once proudly and aptly named the “Capitol of Auto Racing” reduced to basically name only.  I have a brother-in-law who is a 3-time Indianapolis winner and pole winner at the Daytona 500.  I’ve witnessed the rise and fall of CART. 
“When I was involved with ESPN at all of their Cup races, and it was apparent that television was bringing NASCAR to greater awareness with the viewing public and the fans, the TV ratings moved rapidly upward and thus brought corporate dollars to the equation, I said to Benny Parsons at that time that “GREED” would possibly overcome NASCAR and the sport would suffer accordingly. 
“This same situation happened with CART. 
“As it now begins to appear, NASCAR is following the same footsteps as CART. 
“Huge money has “lined” the pockets of all.  The entire community of NASCAR is basking in this luxury, and there has become an attitude that this will continue, regardless of what they do or do not do to keep focused on what got them there.
“Ratings, fan approval, expense for fans to attend races, parity versus “run what you brung”, corporate appetite or apathy will definitely control the future for NASCAR. 
“Sunday’s debacle at IMS will surely speed up the downward spiral presently within NASCAR.
“Oh, if further evidence is needed to illustrate the point above, look at the number of major corporate sponsors for the Cup Series next year.  Look at the number of legend teams gone or going from NASCAR.  When the “roots” are gone, there is nothing left to hold up the plant.
“So it goes for the long-time real fans of NASCAR, versus the fly-by-night social fans of the present.
“ Finally, go, Morgan Shepherd; you have figured it out. NASCAR hasn’t been able to fill the fields in the Nationwide Series, so Morgan and Cope have seen that it’s an easy buck to show up and collect. Keep skating Morgan.  Maybe Cale, Darrell, A.J. and Rutherford will join you.  Still better money for last place than when they won races!!!???!!!  Could be the reason the NASCAR drivers, owners and crews are keeping quiet.  Yah, think??????”

C, in North Carolina worries that Ford Motor Company is losing interest in NASCAR:
“It seems to me that Ford has been scaling back on NASCAR for years. Back in the 1990s they had as many or more than GM!
“They at one time had Roger Penske, Bill Elliott, the Stavola Bros, Bud Moore, Harry Melling, Bobby Allison, Junior Johnson, Travis Carter, Alan Kulwicki.
“Now just Jack Roush, Doug Yates and the Woods!
“So they have been reducing support for years!”

W says he’s worried that NASCAR is taking sponsorship dollars away from race teams, to the detrement of the sport overall. And he worries about sponsor conflicts that hurt the teams:
“As much as Detroit might end up being a serious issue for NASCAR and the teams, I see one other major sponsorship issue that no one seems to want to talk about. How many teams have been affected by the insane series sponsor edicts where NASCAR gets the series sponsor for big bucks but the teams lose several high dollar sponsors?
“Look, having the Nationwide series is great, but why can’t a team still have GEICO on a car? The same with Sprint.
“The teams lose, and only due to the greed of NASCAR.
“NASCAR needs to give up the exclusive deals, stick to the series, and let the teams have the whole gamut of available sponsorships.
“NASCAR loves to say “don’t mess up our show.” Without the teams there is no show.
“The series sponsorship only promises the fan a race date and a track...and the track doesn’t provide much of a show if there are no teams.
“None of the teams can survive on a NASCAR payout-purse.
“They are stinking up their own show with their greed, and that sure isn’t anything new.”

And M says he liked our story about Tony George’s push to bring soft walls into racing...but with a caveat: “Great column concerning one of the major turning points in racing safety.
“How sad that NASCAR had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the use of the Safer Barrier.
“How many NASCAR drivers would have been saved from injury and death if (NASCAR CEO Brian) France and (NASCAR president Mike) Helton could have just swallowed their pride and admitted that another racing organization had a better idea.”

Thanks for the comments and ideas, and keep ‘em coming. NASCAR executives do listen to what you have to say...so say it right here.

Agree? Disagree? Don’t just brood. Express yourself here, and make your voice heard clearly in NASCAR headquarters in Daytona and Charlotte and in NASCAR race shops throughout North Carolina and the rest of the country.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions and insight, on this topic, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR. Any questions, just ask Mike at . And bookmark this page for continually updated NASCAR reports: http://independenttribune.net/index.php/sports/mulhern/

The post-race NASCAR report from Montreal could be controversial: did NASCAR try to sandwich too much into one weekend, with Pocono and Montreal? Rain at both tracks, and NASCAR’s schedules leave no wiggle room.
(Jacques Villeneuve, driver of the L’Equipeur/Ganotec Toyota, drives down pit lane after a wreck during the NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 Montreal presented by Dodge on August 2, 2008 at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.) (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Thursday, July 31, 2008

NASCAR’s 15-horsepower cut has Toyota men steaming…but Kyle Busch is still winning

Toyota’s racing boss Lee White isn’t very happy with NASCAR over last week’s Nationwide engine rules change (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

By Mike Mulhern

Just minutes before the Indy start Sunday, Toyota’s Lee White was standing at the vast bay window overlooking pit road from four-stories up and the frontstretch of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, in the warm summer sunshine that would soon coat a scene of chaos.

But was he worried about the looming tire disaster in one of this sport’s biggest events?

Nope. That was out of his hands, of course.

What he was jawing about was something quite different – NASCAR’s newest rules change (in a season of virtually none) that is aimed at slowing the Toyota charge on the Saturday Nationwide tour, which the marque he now heads is dominating.

But then dominating isn’t quite the word. Crushing might be more appropriate: Toyota has won 15 of the year’s 22 Nationwide races, in an awesome display of prowess. “Hard work,” as White would describe it. “More horsepower,” as his beleaguered rivals would complain.

Now perhaps, in this day of $4 gas, NASCAR executives might want to consider addressing the PR issue of ‘gas-guzzling’ engines, which get about five miles per gallon. It’s even been suggest in some quarters that NASCAR might want to start worrying about mpg as much as mph and hp, perhaps even set a goal of, say, 12 mpg for these engines for 2010. Why not? In fact, Ford’s Jack Roush isn’t the only guy to question why NASCAR keeps letting manufacturers increase engine power, rather than decrease it. Maybe if drivers went into the first turn at Indy at 190 mph instead of 210 mph they might put on a better show….and Goodyear might not have such a tough time building tires for these 3400-pound creatures.

But that’s another story….

Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve will be the next NASCAR Nationwide showdown, Saturday afternoon August 2, and Toyota will be 15 horsepower down (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

NASCAR, after hearing complaints for weeks about Toyota’s horsepower edge on the Saturday tour (where it is allowed to run its Sunday Sprint Cup engine design, while Chevrolet has so far been forced to run its venerable SB2 design instead of the Cup R07), put Chicago engines on the dyno two weeks ago to check those allegation.

And then NASCAR made a change to cut air into the Toyota engines, which Kyle Busch says probably cost him about 15 horsepower. NASCAR’s Robin Pemberton (who in the last few weeks has taken an increasingly higher profile in the sport) said that was to balance the competition.
Now if Chevrolet were running its R07, it too would have been subjected to that rules change. Indeed, Chevrolet is now repeating its call on NASCAR to let it run the R07 on the Nationwide series.

On top of that, Busch had just won Saturday night’s race cross-town at O’Reilly Raceway Park – and in victory thanked his rivals for firing him up.

That was Busch’s 15th major NASCAR win of the season (six in Cup, seven in Nationwide, two in Truck).
So what in the world could White be complaining about?

Toyota’s Tony Stewart has five Nationwide tour wins, and Toyota men have won 15 of the year’s 22 races (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

Well, let’s hear him out. After all, he’s the new Toyota racing boss, and this is his first major point to make since getting those role on point:

“All these ululaters – that’s Latin for howling, whining, crying –

“I’m not complaining. I’m upset. They penalized us from best to worst.

“The far-reached effect of this is on the race teams. And I have seen two letters to Toyota teams from potential sponsors who have said they are questioning being involved with our teams now. Because sponsors come to win, and now that’s not okay to run up front in a Toyota now, that’s what this message is.

Despite NASCAR’s engine cut, Kyle Busch still won last weekend’s Nationwide stop...and praised his rivals for firing him up
(Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

“The reaction nation-wide is that ‘NASCAR is picking on Toyota.’ We couldn’t have bought better ads.

“So maybe they’ll have to go get a Chevy engine deal and some decals, because apparently that’s okay.”

NASCAR’s Robin Pemberton described the new rule this way: “Eventually all teams that upgrade to new engine packages will be subject to this rule modification.

“Over the years in our sport, we’ve taken steps on numerous occasions to help maintain a level playing field among our competitors and we will continue to do so.”

White says the engine setback is only firing up his men: “We’re going to put our heads down and keep working.

“Kyle Busch winning Saturday night, that’s not us, that doesn’t count. That’s Kyle Busch. Give him a little credit, and Jason Ratcliffe (his engine man). Give Dave Rogers (the crew chief) a lot of credit.

“Take Dave Rogers’ car out of the equation and how many wins would we have: five. And life would be good, wouldn’t it.

Kyle Busch has 15 NASCAR wins this season, and the season is barely half over (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

“But Dave has some unbelievable mojo, to be able to work and win with four different drivers. That’s the most amazing thing I’ve seen in my 40 years in racing.

“But this engine rule will affect us at every mid-size track.

“Joe Gibbs has a couple of Chevy SB2 engines left, and in a couple of weeks we may lay those dyno sheets up for review.

“Let me make one thing clear. We are not claiming discrimination.

“One car – with an engine built by John Dysinger (for driver David Reutimann) – that is fourth in the points and hasn’t won a race, yes had the most horsepower.

“The second-place and third-place cars – Fords – were right at the top, only four or five (horsepower) down. And Ford has the tightest bore-center and thus, by this ruling, should be the worst.

“Fourth-place was Kyle Busch; next was Richard Childress….

“So the guys crying the loudest are getting the job done in the points.

Can NASCAR stop Toyota’s rampage? Check in Saturday afternoon in Montreal...and Sunday afternoon in Pocono. At least Kyle Busch’s rivals won’t have to worry about him Saturday...he’ll be focusing on Pocono, while teammate Joey Logano (here at Indy last Saturday) runs Dave Rogers’ car (Photo: Toyota Motorsports)

“But we knew we’d be saddled with this at some point in time. We knew we’d have to pay our dues. And, frankly, after 40 years in the business I know that the only thing worse than not winning is winning too much.

“But now look – two years ago Childress won 21 of 35 Nationwide races…and that was okay. And last year Rick Hendrick won half the Cup races, and Chevrolet won 26 of 36. So it’s pretty hard for me to say that this is because we’ve won too much, given this history. It doesn’t compute.

“So all you can say is we’ve won too much too soon.”

However isn’t the real situation NASCAR is dealing with here the fact that it can’t okay Chevrolet’s R07 unless Jack Roush also gets a new engine…and Roush says Ford doesn’t have the money to waste on a new engine?

“Jack told me over Christmas that he does have a new engine (ready to be submitted to NASCAR), and that it’s modeled on ours,” White says. “I’m sure he’d love to get it in here…but economics are a challenge. Especially to Jack since he’s the only Ford guy, and he would have to throw away engines and engine parts for seven teams. I’d say that would cost him $12 million to $13 million. Someone’s got to pay for that, and I can’t see Ford writing Jack a check for that.

“So I don’t blame Jack Roush for this; the whining, the ululating, is over on the Chevrolet side.

“But now Jack put out a little statement, saying ‘It’s all about hard work, and his people work harder than ours on any given day,’ and ‘I want to shake the hand of the man who’s working harder than me.’

“Well, I’ve got a list of 100 people who are ready to show up at Fontana and stand in line to shake his hand, because they all think they’re working harder than he is. Our guys work so much harder than Jack Roush’s that it’s criminal.”

Fontana, the tour’s Los Angeles stop, is near Toyota’s West Coast headquarters.

“There is zero reason now for Chevrolet to want to run the R07 on the Nationwide tour,” White says.

“We were mandated to bring this engine into Nationwide. We were told ‘this is the menu you have to meet,’ not a plus or minus. And our engine is exactly to their specs.

“I think Chevrolet now should have to run the R07; it should be mandated.

Kyle Busch, like most NASCAR men, didn’t fare well at the Brickyard (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

“This rule change is unprecedented on the engine side.

“They have never penalized one engine maker over another.”

And then White paused and looked at the bay window at the disaster about to unfold: “But thank goodness for tires…..this thing is old news now.”

Well, until Saturday afternoon’s NASCAR Nationwide race at Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve….

Agree? Disagree? Don’t just brood. Express yourself here, and make your voice heard clearly in NASCAR headquarters in Daytona and Charlotte and in NASCAR race shops throughout North Carolina and the rest of the country.
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The NASCAR Nationwide transporters at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Forget Indy for a moment, and think Big Picture….really Big Picture, like Childress is…

Richard Childress, with 40 years in NASCAR, is looking bigger picture
(Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

By Mike Mulhern

With his racing mantra “no one wins alone,” Richard Childress unveiled plans Wednesday to help support a major new program at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center – the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma.
And the six-time championship NASCAR team owner, who is in the running for a seventh Cup title this season, and headed this week to Pocono and Montreal, says he and Dr. Wayne Meredith, who will spearhead the medical side of the project, hope to use this program to raise the local hospital to a Level One Pediatric Trauma Center.
“There are only 14 such Level One children’s trauma centers in America, and we want Wake Forest Medical Center to become one, and to become a model for others throughout the country, so they can come here and see ‘This is how to save lives,’” Childress said.
Childress hosted a fund-raiser Tuesday evening at his home to start raising the planned $25 million needed this year to kick off the program. And he says he hopes this can raise enough awareness of the issue of childhood trauma to triple the number of Level One children’s trauma centers in the coming years.

Richard and Judy Childress, who hosted a medical charity fund-raiser Tuesday evening, have come a long way since their Southside days in NASCAR
(Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Meredith and Childress says the new program will focus first on acquiring medical specialists in the field and on generating awareness – particularly in the high-profile NASCAR community, which is well-known for its extensive charities, such as Kyle Petty’s Victory Junction Gang Camp in nearby Randleman, which will be hosting a children’s session next week for those with trauma-related problems.
Indeed, there are synergies between the two programs, Childress’ and Petty’s, and the two racers have already talked about that. For one, both men are avid bikers – Childress and several other NASCAR men will be in Sturgis next week— and leveraging Petty’s annual summer charity ride might be one possibility.
And Childress is calling on racing friends like Betty Jane France, from Winston-Salem herself, for support. France, wife of the late NASCAR boss, has been involved with a ‘Speediatrics’ medical program at hospitals in both Daytona and Homestead.
It’s not that far from Childress’ first racing playground, Bowman Gray Stadium, and his 1969 Southside speed shop over to Baptist, but in another sense it’s been a lifetime. And Childress is certainly no stranger to Baptist, which has been at times almost a second home for injured or ailing NASCAR racers…like the late Dale Earnhardt himself, who needed some help from neurosurgeon Charlie Branch after that weird, and still unexplained, Darlington blackout a few years back.
In fact it was a conversation between Branch and Childress, on a trip they took together to a medical convention in Scottsdale, Az., that led to Childress triggering this Institute.
“Dr. Branch and I were speaking to a group of neurosurgeons, and Dr. Branch said ‘We want to pay you of course,’ and I said ‘Instead, let’s do something for children,” Childress said.
“When this was all explained to me and Judy, we knew this was what we wanted to put our arms around.
“In the U.S. we spent $18 per man on cancer research…we spend $10 per man on AIDS research….but the government spends only nine cents, for every man, woman and child in America, on children’s trauma and how we can research and help it.
“We want to give these children a better chance at life when they’re in a bad accident.
“The number one killer of children today is trauma, over 12,000 last year, and we have to do our very best to try to cut this back. So we want to work with first-responders, the paramedics, to make sure they have the right equipment…and the right knowledge. We want to build an institute that will bring knowledge to the program.
“There were over 100,000 children last year left with injuries that needed rehabilitation. And there aren’t a lot of real, true children’s rehabilitation centers around the country.
“And you can’t forget the families—over 90 percent of the families that lose a child end up in divorces, and we have to try to do something about that too.”
The second phase of this project, Meredith and Childress said, is to build a major rehabilitation center that would have a world-wide base.

Richard Childress says this new paint scheme may be used in a Cup race later this season (Photo: WFUBMC)

Meredith, who got his first up-close look at NASCAR while flying the medivac helicopters to North Wilkesboro Speedway, Martinsville Speedway, and Rockingham, says he is well aware of NASCAR’s marketing clout and plans to use it.
“Part of building this institute is to raise awareness at the government level and throughout the country about the magnitude of the problem of pediatric injuries, and hopefully to garner support for all the pediatric programs,” Meredith said.
“To be a verified Level One center means to demonstrate another level of commitment. No matter how you cut it, or how you define it, we need more pediatric trauma centers in this county.
“One of our first things is to make Brenner’s Children’s hospital and make that a Level One Trauma Center. That means building a research program around pediatric trauma, that means building training programs around pediatric trauma. And some of the quality programs we now do with the adult program we need to separate out and do more as an independent commitment.”
Childress says that 12,000 children a year die from trauma each year.

Richard Childress has six NASCAR championships, and he’s gunning for seven this season...but there is more to life....
(Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

“More kids die from injuries than anything else, and we need to shrink that,” Meredith said.
“There are three phases for death from trauma.
“First, immediately at the scene. Lord knows, if we could prevent these injuries, that would be the way to go….
“Second, are those injuries are those that if we can get them to the right care, and if we can learn what to do, we can perhaps save.
“Third, weeks later, are those complications from infections and organ failure.
“Amazing in 2008 most of the treatments we applied to children are based on treatments designed for adults. And the same is true for medical devices.
“But children are not just small adults. They have different physiology and different psychological needs.
“This institute will be charged with and able to assembly a team of the smartest scientists in pediatric injuries from around the country and around the world, to define the correct treatment for children….and to disseminate that information around the country.
“We also want to train. We want to be a center where people come from around the world to learn about treating children.
“We also want to begin to produce devices that are specifically designed for children.”
Meredith, through from nearby Fancy Gap, Va., concedes he wasn’t that much of a NASCAR fan as a kid, “though my family was filled with NASCAR fans.
“But when I first started here for a while I ran the helicopter program and went to the races….
“Now I couldn’t really understand the sport that well just from the radio, or watching on TV. But if you can actually go to a race and see it up close, I became a fan.
“And I’ve followed NASCAR avidly since then…which is a good thing for me now.
“NASCAR is good at getting the word out, and we hope that is what we can do with Richard and Judy Childress in this program.
“If we can make that happen, it will save lives of children across the county.”

Richard Childress (center), flanked by Kevin Harvick and wife DeLana (Photo by Doug Benc/Getty Images)

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Richard Childress (center) is helping drive a new pediatrics program at Baptist Medical Center (Photo: WFUBMC)