Give 'em a 16th and they'll take an eighth
By Jim Huber, Turner Sports Interactive
January 15, 2002
9:53 AM EST (1453 GMT)
COMMENTARY
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Jim Huber
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It is nice to see that, while the rest of us have been successfully hibernating, stock-car racing's bears have been furiously at work slicing and dicing rules just in time for next month's opener at Daytona.
It wouldn't be an off-season without a truckload of changes. Come to think of it, probably wouldn't be a Tuesday without a bunch. I've never been around a sport that so constantly, incessantly tweaks itself. I've never seen a NASCAR rule book. Do they even print one? Or do they simply hand out mimeographed sheets every day?
So, just in case you aren't on the handout list, here are a few of my favorites for Daytona and Talladega. But don't bother memorizing them -- they'll likely change by next week.
* Two metal strips have been banished -- one from the roof, the other from the top of the rear spoiler. That will save $3.95 from the company budget. But save them, guys, rumor is they'll mandate the use of those strips somewhere else.
* This one really is discriminatory, and I understand the Chevy population is going to sue. The spoilers on the rear of the Fords, Pontiacs and Dodges must be 57 inches wide and 6-and-a-half inches high. The Chevrolets, however, must be a quarter inch shorter! There is nothing quite so demeaning as having a short spoiler. There are complexes associated with such disabilities, you know.
* And the restrictor plates. Ah, yes, dear ol' restrictor plates. In a sport built around speed, a sport that has lived on speed for more than half a century, it has become a rather dastardly part of the racing arsenal at the superspeedways over the years. So let's restrict that speed. Make every machine gasp for intake. Restrict, restrict, restrict. But this will surely be the final straw. This newest rule will allow SUV's in the mix. They go from 15/16 inch to 7/8th inch. Now I'm no math genius. No beautiful mind here. But isn't that like the size of a gnat's thumb? Yeah, I thought so.
Seems to me, and I must admit true ignorance when it comes to the perfect recipe for speed and safety (this side of the den couch), but seems to me there's just a little too much off-season for these rules people.
Baseball messes with its strike zone. Football tinkers with instant replay. Golf worries about illegal drivers. Basketball looks for the nearest tattoo parlor. While stock-car racing, which has been around nearly as long as all of them and is more popular than any of them, rebuilds itself weekly as if a 16th of an inch will make it all go away.
Go figure (which they are, constantly).
NOTE: Jim Huber's column appears periodically on NASCAR.com. The opinions listed here are solely those of the writer.
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