Someone explain the 'its ok to CHEAT in Nascar' additude.

Racing in general is like, this it's not just a Nascar attitude. Everyone is looking for the unfair advantage and rules tend to get bent. Remember Ferrari with the flexible wings and tracion control when it was banned..oops wasn't supposed to say that, lol. Benneton in 94, BAR this year, and countless others that haven't gotten caught yet. It's all a part of racing.

 

Can someone explain to me how i didn't even notice? lol, I have no excuse i've been sleeping all day. Damned midnight shift.

 

It's not about cheating on the score card, it's about using a prototype club that no one knows about, it isn't legal, was built under the pretense of liberal and loose rule interpertation and therefore yields you an advantage. It's like hedging your porfolio; sometimes you win, sometimes you're screwed. Anyone with competative drive, seeks an advantage. If they're not, they're losing.
You don't just sit on your hands at work, do you?

 

If i wanted very badly to win and knew i wouldn't get caught? Sorry to say yes probably. I'm going straight to hell, i know it........

 

Anyone want to know where to get some fire extinguishers that actually hold NOS????

 

Did AJ Foyt have a garage sale?

 

It is called working the grey areas of the rules. The F1 rules are so vague that it allows a lot of interpretation of how the rules are applied.

Michelin for example used the fact that the FIA checked the tires before they went out not after to create a tire that got wider on the track.

Indy car teams in the early 90's were using Titanium brake rotors coated with cast iron since the tech process was to apply a magnet to the rotor befor the race.

Honda using motorcycle frames that have different geometry that honda claims was "mismanufactured" So the AMA has 2 jigs for honda motorcycles on the motocross series. It is funny how the Factory teams only have access to the Misman. frames?

This list can go on and on. It is the nature of racing to find a loop hole in the rules to your advantage.

 

Racing is funny...the more rules you make, the more rules get bent. I sya bent because most of the time, the intent is to find the very very edge of what can be interpeted as in compliance....until the officals realize what you're doing and clarify the rules.

A couple I saw:
motorcycle, the rules say no fairing and the front number plate must be atleast 12" x 8" (I think).....the winning team had a big, maybe 20" x 15 curved - fairing like number plate. The following year the rule was the number plate will be 12"x8" and will be flat.

The rules say stock engine. The rules say the valve seats may be replaced and non-oem seats are acceptable. The winning team custom made seats that were taller than stock, pushing the valves into the combustion chamber and raising the compersion ratio. The next year the vavle seat position was spec'd.

The rule says 20 gallons of fuel ( I think). The winning team used 1" fuel line the circled the frame adding a gallon. The new rule spec'd the fuel line ID and a direct path.....the winning team then put a floor jack under there 21 gallon tank to pop it up, reducing it to 20 gallons....until it was popped back down with an air hose, making it 21 again.

The list goes on forever.

 

Let's not forget where most of the original stock car racers got their starts!

 

LOL!!! You are talking about a race catagory that has its roots in bootlegging. Cheat? no! Say it aint so.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I like the Nascar circuit too.

 

Theres alot of cheating in karting. People putting Naphthalene in their fuel; and destroying all the others. Makes me pissed.

 

Its called the unfair advantage.

If you're not cheating, you're not trying...

 

I lifted this, which is part of my own posting in another thread:

Once a measurement rule has been "set," all designers and engineers (if they have the least bit of imagination) will set out to test and explore the rules.

In sailboat racing, innovations such as Mylar, Kevlar, bulb keels, shifting water ballast, fiberglass, overall length rules vs. waterline rules (such as Dennis Conner's multihull America's Cup boat), asymetrical spinnakers using bowsprits, etc., were often derided as rules violations.

In autoracing, one doesn't have to look much further than to Jim Hall's Chaparrals -- the 2Es with their wings on tall struts, the use of an automatic transmission which allowed a third pedal flap controller keeping the wings horizontal when accelerating and on straights, but providing downforce in curves, to the Chaparral 2J that had two motors - a 456 CI Chevy V8 powered the rear wheels, and a 274 cc Rockwell snowmobile engine powered a pair of "sucker" fans in the rear, with sliding Lexan sideskirts placed around the bottom to maintain the vacuum. Those innovations were "legal" until the rule makers got around to rewriting the rules.

In both sailboat racing and in motorsports, sometimes the innovations were banned in certain classes with the development of new rules, and in other cases the innovations were incorporated into the rules.

If no rule was set on the thickness of tire tread or sidewall construction, what parameters would you, as an engineer, consider exploring? What if you believed that you in fact could make a tire that was extremely thin in some areas, but you believed could perform safely? You'd try, wouldn't you? Sure, you might be wrong, and unfortunately, the cost of being wrong could be quite high in motorsports, and might result in violating a general safety rule -- BUT, AGAIN, IF YOU HONESTLY THOUGHT YOU COULD MAKE A SAFE TIRE WHILE EXPLORING (AND EXPLOITING) THE RULES, ISN'T THAT WHAT INNOVATION IN ALL FORMS OF RACING IS ABOUT?

And, there should be no question in anybody's mind that THAT is precisely the kind of innovation that drives ALL of the F1 teams (subject to their own budgets) from Ferrari to Minardi -- they all are attempting to explore the rules (and loopholes are legitimate targets in my opinion). It is just that sometimes, the stars and planets line up for one team particularly well, and at other times, well ......

Now, this comment isn't intended as a defense of Michelin for taking any particular course of action that they MIGHT have known would compromise the safety of all involved, but rather, this is intended to recognize (and appreciate) the kind of engineering and design innovations that we all should expect to be fostered in racing. Admittedly, sometimes the results can be unexpectedly rotten.

With respect to tinkering with fuels in karting, that is the sanctioning body's problem if they haven't written a rule prohibiting it. If a class rule says it is illegal, then it is illegal, and protests need to be filed. If the sanctioning body hasn't figured out a way to police the problem, then it, IMO, remains the sanctioning body's problem.

Mark Nerheim

 

You've got it all wrong... you take your Group24 battery (or whatever your car has), cut it open, and wire up a motorcycle battery to the posts. Then, with the extra room (especially if you have a raised battery tray) you hide your mini-NOS bottle. Plumb the line through the positive battery cable, and you're set! Not enough to go barrelling down the straight every lap, but enough to edge by a guy at the finish.

That way, when your car catches on fire (it is Italian, right?) you can actually put it out.

 

REAL RACING where you could easily die, but not in a car --

OK, during "big" regattas, we'd take out our heavy-duty battery, replace it with a small motorcycle battery, take out the lightbulbs on the masthead (and on the deck and in the cabin), sky all of our halyards (running fishing line to keep them still accessable to get the weight down onto the deck or into the hull), and replace our standard longshaft six horse outboard with a 3 or 4 h/p shortshaft outboard with about a pint-size gasoline tank on board, and use the smallest anchor with the shortest line/scope allowed under our class rules. If we had an emergency that lasted for more than about 15 minutes, we would have had problems.

But, we were racing AND we were (arguably) within our class rules.

But ohh man, you should have seen the pounding we took on Lake Superior, with ore boats in the class of the Edmund Fitzgerald, or bigger, motoring past us, but a Coast Guard destroyer (transfered from the Navy) used as the race committee/control boat unable to hold station on the start/finish line, 40+ kts constant, with 400 (or is it 600+) mile fetch with huge waves hitting us on our bow).

Mark Nerheim

 

Cheating has gone on since day oner in ALL forms of racing, mainly due to rules that aren't specific enough.

 

Sheer genius!!

 

One of the Drag teams got caught with a nos bottle inside the dry sump oil tank, the line ran inside the oil line.....I guess they got caught because the car had to sit a wail on the line at a race, the now hot oil heated the nos bottle, which drove it over-pressure (appearently no blow-off valve), the bottle blew a fitting and shot out of car like a missile....landing spinning on the ground in front of one of the race officials.

 

There is a book out about cheating in NASCAR which may be a fairly interesting read. No doubt, the author has had is NASCAR credentials revoked but at least he had the balls to write about it which is a lot more than may be
said about the other fat, overpaid, underworked NASCAR media humps.

It recall an incident a few years ago when a NASCAR team had the audacity to stand up to the rules makers. They came out publically criticizing NASCAR officials about arbitrary rules, etc.

The punishment came down hard and fast. The team was sanctioned by NASCAR, extra weight added to their cars and fined heavilly. But the point
was made, there is discontent in the NASCAR ranks and if the teams
(who make far more money selling t-shirts, hats, and crap trinkets than they do in prize money per year) say anything in a public forum, their wings are clipped fairly rapidly by the NASCAR heirarchy and NASCAR makes darn sure
they are not competitive for a long, long time.

BHW