Some called old Smokey Eunick (Forgive my spelling) the grandady of all
cheaters, he called it close analysis of the rules. Like the time he won
a race when everyone else stopped for fuel. When the car was in tech with
the gas tank out being measured he jumped in the car and drove it to his
pit . When asked about it he stated that they had limited the amount of
fuel the tank would hold, there was nothing in the rules to keep him from
having a 15 gallon fuel line.
On Fri, 03 Aug 2001 12:00:13 -0700 Phil Trenholme <dim1@home.com> writes:
> If this seems too long just read the last line in Part II.
>
> Last Tuesday, NASCAR fined Jeff Gordon's crew chief (the head coach
> of
> Gordon's team)
> $25,000 for using an illegal intake manifold during a race. (Stick
> with
> me/you won't need
> to know what an intake manifold is.) Gordon himself got stripped of
> 100
> Winston Cup points
> (the points they add up to determine each year's champion).
>
> Gordon won the race in question, but the interesting part is: Even
> after
> it came out he'd
> been cheating, the victory stood. Gordon kept all the prize money,
> too.
> His Winston Cup
> ranking didn't change a bit after losing the points. Indeed, the
> whole
> thing's already been
> forgotten.
>
> Lesson: Cheating in NASCAR is sort of expected.
>
> Last year, I spent some time with NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayfield's
> team.
> One of the pit crew
> guys, in a moment of candor, told me that in this sport cheaters are
> actually admired.
> Other teams respect your skills if you manage to slide something by.
> With countless
> templates and rules/defining body types and engine specs down to the
> millimeter/stock car
> racing is in large part a matter of beating NASCAR's careful
> inspections. Each time the
> sport issues a new bylaw, teams hit the wind tunnels and engine
> simulators looking for
> maximum performance at the very edge of legality. When the car gets
> to
> the racetrack, the
> edge is often blurred.
>
> This spring, the Mayfield team got nailed for using an illegal fuel
> additive to boost
> horsepower. A crewmember poured STP in the tank at a pit stop.
> Blatant,
> flat-out cheating
> (and Mayfield didn't even win), yet the cheater still works for the
> team, and nobody thinks
> less of him or of Mayfield. It's a part of the sport: You hope you
> don't
> get caught, but if
> you do ... aw, shucks. A few weeks later, Mayfield finally did win;
> this
> time NASCAR fined
> the team for a too-low roof-line, which altered aerodynamics. But
> here,
> too, the victory
> stood. (Mayfield claimed the roof got bent when he jumped on it
> celebrating his win.)
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