DeTomaso Mailing List: July 2001, Message #134

Since I have been a NASCAR fan for many years I have heard the stories about
how in the old days the NASCAR tech inspectors would sometimes look the
other way (and tell the car owner ahead of time) when they wanted a
particular car to win a particular race. I thought NASCAR had outgrown that
kind of behavior, but I can come up with no other explantion for what I saw
at Daytona last night.

The one constant at the restrictor plate tracks (Daytona & Talladega) since
NASCAR adopted their present aerodynamic package has been numerous passes
for the lead. Not last night! To anybody who knew anything about NASCAR
racing it was obvious that the car of Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a HUGE
horsepower advantage over every other car in the field. The kind of
horsepower advantage that a car would have if, for example, NASCAR had given
the engine builder a restrictor plate with holes one sixteenth of an inch
larger than everybody else's restrictor plate.

The reports in the papers all talk about the "Hollywood Style Script" where
Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins the next race on the track where six months earlier
his father lost his life. What a coincidence! YEAH!
RIGHT!

If I wanted to see "Hollywood Style Scripts", I would watch the World
Wrestling Federation instead of watching an honest (???) automobile race. My
vocabulary is inadequate to fully express the extent of my disgust!!!!



H.P. Brelsford