NOT CHEATING? NOT TRYING! How NASCAR Drivers and Teams Bent the Rules
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 มิ.ย. 2024
- If you're not cheating, you're not trying. The battle cry of NASCAR drivers and also Los Guerreros. If you know, you know. They lie, cheat and steal!
But the thing is, with NASCAR, for the most part it was all because of
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The thing about Knaus: remember the Garage 56 NASCAR entry at Le Mans last year? Chad Knaus was the mastermind behind that. They turned one of the greatest rulebenders in modern NASCAR, and let him throw that rulebook out the window. And people were surprised it was outpacing GTE entries.
Another "cheating without cheating" story from NASCAR is the 1997 "T-Rex" car used by Jeff Gordon in the All-Star race. The chassis was built more like a sports prototype than the current generation of stock cars and had a then radical setup that allowed the front end to dip while raising the back spoiler under aerodynamic load.
There's a legendary exchange after the race between the crew chief Ray Evernham and Bill France:
"There's nothing on that car that's illegal!"
"It will be Monday morning."
NASCAR no longer allows teams to keep their trophy if the car doesn't meet the rules in post-race technical inspection. Since 2019 NASCAR has disqualified 29 cars and relegated them to last in the running order with just 1 point earned, stripping them of their finishing position, stage points, etc.
Well. That’s a bit shit.
@@AidanMillward yeah but they needed a reason to discourage outright cheating
29 cars? I would not be so vague. There have been only 8 cars on history that have seen a DQ after winning. Denny Hamlin being the most recent one in 2022.
There are fines, and levels of penalties but typically points and money are fined post race. Which in theory makes a top 10 null and void if you get a L2 penalty.
@@AidanMillwardit was a big deal in the nascar community when it first happend because it was so unheard of. In order to be dq in nascar used to be you had to really cheat like nitro or a big motor. But yeah they do deny Hamlin for tape on the nose of the car under his delivery wrap. How big of a advantage did it give him? Idk but not enough to make it worth a dq.
@@joshuademore7507 I'm talking specifically post-race inspection failures since the new disqualification policy was adopted in 2019. 29 cars since then have been DQ'd with 4 of them being race-winning cars (or trucks).
In total, NASCAR has actually disqualified 79 cars in Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks dating all the way back to the first season. Would there be a lot more if the policy of today was in place the entire time? Definitely.
However after Emanuel Zervakis was DQ'd in 1960 Bill France Sr., as Aiden said, didn't want fans to leave the track without knowing who won. DQ's still happened, but not for the winner until Jeff Burton in the then-Busch Series in 1992. The next Cup winner to be DQ'd wouldn't be until Hamlin in 2022, 62 years after Zervakis.
Logano's glove was used to close up the gap between the window net and the A Pillar to prevent or minimize the amount of air getting in to the greenhouse. They weren't adding drag, they were removing it.
I was a local dirt track racer for many years, and the best piece of advice I ever got was from an old school mechanic. “Son, there’s 1,000 ways to cheat. If you get caught, there’s still 999 other ways.”
Talking about Smokey, I did get the chance in 1995 at a NASCAR truck race to sit and have a dinner with him. I got to hear some great stories of "creative rulebook reading" all these years later I am still amazed he took time to answer some dumb kids questions and treated me like I was just one of the guys.
It is NOT cheating...it is a "creative interpretation of the rules"
To use an old NASCAR quote: "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't winning." Every team works within the gray areas of the rule book to gain edges on their competitors. And yes, you're saying Chad Knaus correctly.
Also, Rubbin' is Racin'.
How many times did Knaus and the 48 team cheat during their 5 straight years of titles?
*Grey
There were sooo many more “innovations” on that Chevelle than you mentioned. Most were aero massaging of the body work. Spoiler lip over the back window. Wheel openings shaped around the tires. Grille flush to the opening. Bumpers tucked beautifully to the car. Perfect fitting windshield mouldings that also extended around the A pillars. The bottom of the car was almost perfectly flat like an F1 car. There were body lines hidden at the edges of the paint lines to direct air around the car. And more and more. The car was a technological masterpiece and would be considered one even today.
The 30 lb helmet used at qualifying weigh in was my favourite. Swap helmets during the race and you are 30 lbs lighter. Genius.
The other one was the "Regulation" radio, i.e the radio case filled with tungsten for inspection, swapped out for a working radio for the race. That was another 25lb...
I've seen 30 lb. weights IN the helmet when it was hanging off a hook on the roll cage. A thirty pound helmet, the driver couldn't keep his head up straight, and suicide if he did, and something caused him to crash. It would rip his head off.
@@gchampi2 Anything allowable that needed to be done, needs to have a NASCAR official with the crew member while he's doing it. After the cars go across the scales and lined up for qualifying, a crew member would tell an official that the battery of the radio in the car went dead, and he would need to swap it out. The official would see the radio he was going to put in. Tell the crew member okay. Then be close enough to watch him change the radio. But not close enough to see the radio he took out. Human nature type thing. It's just a radio. Right?
Back when I worked for ARCA from the mid 90's to the mid 00's, they would try these things on the newer tech guys. About a quarter of the guys, like me, were full time, at the track officials. Many were guys who worked part-time at the races in their area. It was a challenge to keep having to teach those guys what to watch for. When I would be "on loan" for a Cup race, I would watch those guys like a hawk. I didn't want to be the ARCA guy that let something get by that affected the outcome of a race. Oh no not me...
Yes you do pronounce the K in Knaus. Also stretching the rules in NASCAR was so rampant in the past, there's no way to even look up every instance of it. And that's one of the great things about the history of NASCAR.
My favourite NASCAR cheat was the 1998 Don Miller Taurus. Hagerty and Stapleton42 covered it really well, way better than I can explain it. Basically, they cut up a pre production car to raise the rear end, NASCAR inspected it and because the car wasn’t yet on sale, they assumed it was the real deal. An incredible cheat.
Also the Twisted Sister era of cars was wild. They fitted within the templates but looked like they’d been crashed they were so bent.
14:36 ok that just blew my mind up. Big Iron man was a NASCAR driver?!?!
Yep.
He used to run the local weekly shows at the Nashville Fairgrounds track. He had a certain time he had to leave to get to the Grand Old Opry to perform. If the races were running late, even if he was leading, he'd pull off the track jump into his street car, and out the tunnel he went.
As a kid, I saw him race at Charlotte. 'Out in the West Texas town El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican Girl' o/~
I'm a fellow Brit, but Smokey Unick was a legend.
The time they took the petrol tank out of his car and he just started it and drove off was hilarious
He was not widely known as a giver of fucks
This is what I miss about racing today. The sheer creativity is what made it fascinating.
Everything is too exact. It was better when measurements were, "It has to be between X inches and X inches." or degrees, or some other measurement. Someone who understood the "principles" of engineering could try different combinations of things to see what would work. The only computers they used were the ones in their heads.
You call them regulations, I call them suggestions. No you can’t look at my fuel tank
Ok then start your car and run a lap
@@benjarsenault hold my beer
Can't look at your fuel tank?? Then you can't see a green flag much less a checkered...
That's how that works...😁
@@DDS029 new car next week, you can check that one
Aidan using one of the most iconic NASCAR pics in Google history on the thumbnail is a W
Tbh I used it cos it looked decent. Just happened to be a Wiki Commons one as well.
@@AidanMillward it’s a classic NASCAR Google photo, that’s for sure. Not complaining tho ;)
@@IanTheMotorsportsMan_YT taken by a USAF airman too. And nascar loves them troops. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
@@AidanMillward GOD BLESS AMERICA🇺🇸
@IanTheMotorsportsMan_YT God save our King🇬🇧🏴
The guy that owns Smokey's chevelle now did a side by side measuring. It had alot of aero tricks. Bumpers were modified but width of the car was stock.
I have a picture I found somewhere on the net of Smokey's car above a picture of a street Chevelle. They lined up the pictures to match the wheel locations of both cars, and super-imposed a grid over both cars. You THEN can plainly see the differences.
Marty Robbins also known in music circles as the man who introduced the 'fuzz' guitar effect to the world. A session guitarist played through a faulty mixing desk, Robbins decided to keep it in the finished track and the rest is history.
Felina, Good bye
Actually, Smokey's BIG change on the dreaded Chevelle was to re-position the body atop the frame, dropping the body by raising the frame within it. The car sat DOWN on the frame. I know, as my uncle Curtis drove it and I was there in the pits at Daytona and Atlanta. What nobody realized at the time was tht Yunick understood a LOT more about aero than anybody else in NASCAR (or F1, at that time). EVERY single place where the body was mated to another item, from the front bumper to the grille to the windshield, was smoothed for cleaner air flow. Then there was the "spoiler" at the rear of the roof and the most advanced "roll cage" that was more frame than reinforcement (go online and you can find pictures; compare them with other 1967 stockers and you'll see how far afield this thing was). Curtis loved it...until it tried to kill him.
Smokey had been doing htis stuff for years...like alumnum bumpers that were steel plated before the chrome got applied. These things were so flimsy you could have folded them. When Pontiac was serious about racing, there were a LOT of aluminum parts like inner fenders and floorboards.
Actually, there weren't very many truly BIG engines, but there were quite a few that were about 20cid oversize...just ask King Richard about Daytona 4 July, 1984 and the 1983 500.
NO MORE TUNES!!!
Never expected to find Curtis Turner's nephew in an Aiden Millward Comments section any more than I expected to meet Fireball Robert's daughter at an Allman Brothers show, but here we are ;)
I'm Greg from Winston-Salem. They put Curtis through hell for trying to organize the drivers. If it's not the Teamsters and you let Roger Penske call them Charters, I guess it's Ok ;)
@@GregBrownsWorldORacing Ah, I could tell you some stories about Fireball. He used to stay at my mother's house when he came to Charlotte for the races, from 1960-63. Mother was a few years older than Glen, but looked like a statuesque Rita Hayworth. She had met him at Darlington in 1958. Mother had a friend whose father was the Chevy dealer in Dillon, SC and the pair of them always went to Darlington for the 500. They were both divorcees who loved to party. Glen didn't stay with her in '64, but she went to see him in the hospital. She never went to another race. I drove F5000 in Europe in the early 1970, after a stint flying F4s in Vietnam. Mother spent two weeks every summer in France, but she refused to come to any of my races.
@@rustyturner431 Seeing Fireball after that Crash in Charlotte must have been awful, I can imagine not wanting to go to anymore races after that. Fortunately, I've never been to a race where something that awful happened. Not sure if F4 or F5000 would give a bigger rush?
I've listened to Merrill McPeak saying The Thunderbirds were more dangerous than Nam because the guys before and after him had snuffed it. Sounds like you've got a pretty cool story Rusty, pleased to meet ya!
@@GregBrownsWorldORacing I've had more fun than anybody I know, from working at Holman & Moody in the 1960s to running boutique dealerships later (Alfa, Citroen, Lotus, Triumph, then later Ferrari and then Jaguar/Maserati/Volvo...then I was an AMG dealer 1987-92 before the company got gobbled up by Daimler-Benz, who already owned 49%). I was also a motorcycle dealer in the late '80s-'90s and was the morning anchor on the ABC radio station in Houston '87-'93. Plus, I was a partner in a few bars. I was never bored! Cheers...
Aidan, you missed part 2 of the Smokey Yunick "fuel line" story. After seeing the 2" line, NASCAR responded by ruling that fuel lines could be no larger than 1/4" in diameter. Smokey looked at that, had a think, and installed a massively long fuel line (stories vary, from 60 feet to 60 yards), with the majority of the line concealed under the drivers seat. Different method, same effect. Supposedly that got outlawed after his car failed tech inspection at Daytona on 10 things, causing Smokey to comment "Best make that eleven" as he hopped into the car & drove it back to his workshop, leaving the fuel tank behind...
Some would use parts of the roll cages as fuel "lines", the most popular a lot of guys did would double wall the sheetmetal over the rear axle, the package shelf area. They would loop the extra over-sized fuel line in there. That went on a lot for a long time.
In the 1980s Junior Johnson owned Darrell Waltrip's car, in his book and in various interviews DW tells the story of having lead buckshot in the frame rails so the car would meet weight prior to the race. On the pace laps DW would turn a wrench in the car and that would open a screw and the buckshot would fall out onto the track and thus the car is now lighter
and the best part of that was the hole it came out of was the jack post so when Nascar would jack the car up to inspect the underside the jack covered the evidence.
Turned out they didn't weigh the car in post race inspection back then, I mean , Why would you 😅
Another infamous case of a driver/team owner getting caught is Michael Waltrip during Daytona Speedweeks in 2007, where he got caught and fined $100k and 100 points when NASCAR found "Rocket fuel" substance in his car during an inspection. I think others can explain it better than I can, but the penalty really curtailed Waltrip's season from the start, as he only qualified for 14 out of the 36 races in 2007.
ol DW has a number of great stories as well.
It was an oxygenator added to the fuel. "Rocket fuel" is a misnomer. Any "rocket-type fuel" in and of itself wouldn't work. The oxygenating chemical MAY have been used in "rocket fuel", but that's as close as it gets.
The whole revving the engine until it breaks after winning is/was (don't know if it's still allowed) also such an obvious way to get away with cheating.
It doesn't work. You can't "pump" the engine if it's broke too much. But pumping was mostly a quick check to see if they wanted you to tear the engine down to be measured. As long as they can measure a crank throw, a rod length, a cylinder diameter, and the combustion chamber volume they can calculate anything they need to know... and do.
When I heard Marty Robbins I imagined Brandon Herrera showing up.
My Dad raced stocks, lower classes and even up here on the West Coast of Canada, we knew about Smokey Yunick. Fun Video, thanks. And a big fan of Marty Robbins, on of his modified race cars was named after one of his songs, "Devil woman". And purple.
Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Slap shoes (another channel that covers NASCAR) has said Smokey wrote at least 50% of the rule book by breaking rules before they on the books
The best officials are the best exploiters of rules. NASCAR hired Gary Nelson years ago so they didn't have to deal with him.
Slap is a legend - Air Base Speedway, which is no longer on the map, put SlapShoes ON the map.
@@GregBrownsWorldORacingAnd a later video of his is widely credited with the return of another historic NASCAR venue…North Wilkesboro Speedway.
@@FlashoftheBlades Yeah, I used to go there as a kid w/grandpa saw Pearson (My first Cup Race), Petty, Tiny Lund win there. After College I saw Earnhardt win there to break Harry Gan'ts September win streak 😥. I went to the last Truck race there. Couldn't get a Cup Ticket. Might have been the best NASCAR Modified racing there too.
I'm glad Slap chipped in on the side of the fans. Dale Jr & Benny Parson's widow I'm sure talked to Marcus Smith, but they both kind of had an agenda - The fans & people of Wilkes County deserve a lot of credit. I didn't drive by there often, but when I did it made me really sad for many years. Now, if we can get Rockingham back...
@@GregBrownsWorldORacing I was only 10 when the last points-paying Cup Series race there took place. My parents didn’t have cable, so I didn’t know what was going on with why it wasn’t on the schedule in 1997. But when I found out why, the truth was more nefarious than I could’ve imagined.
May be a “cross the pond” translation thing. Drivers put their hands up on superspeedways to reduce drag by keeping airflow out of the cockpit. Lagono’s glove was webbed meaning he block more air. The issue wasn’t really the webbing per se, it was the glove had an unapproved modification after it was made. Meaning the material of the webbing hadn’t been safety tested (fire proofed).
Also, nascar has a “table of shame” again. Anything found to be out of spec gets displayed the following race for EVERYONE to see with the reference item, test jig, template, etc alongside.
Oh, if you really want scandal, I’d suggest looking up MWR (micheal waltrip racing) if you haven’t already. There’s an entire video there🤣
Not the next race...if it was found anytime before the actual race, it was put on display THAT weekend.
@@DDS029 true. But most failures nowadays are found in either post race or at the R/D center. Very few items are found pre-race, unless your SHR lol
"Wouldn't know how to pour piss out of a boot even if the instructions were written on the heel"
Imagine the loopholes Smokey could’ve exploited if he was in f1
On his book NASCAR for Dummies, Mark Martin told a story about crew chief Gary Nelson. While working for DiGard Racing during the mid-1970s, Nelson filled the frame of Darrell Waltrip's car with buckshot. During the race, Waltrip flipped a secret switch in the car that released the buckshot, thus reducing the weight of the car. Nelson would go on to take several executive roles in NASCAR, such as Cup Series Director, Vice President of Competition, and Vice President of Research and Development.
As someone once said: "The best way to spot a cheater is to hire a cheater."
There are a lot of good stories of a similar bent about Penske/Donahue during their Trans Am days.
Reminds me of F1. Particularly during the Ross Brawn years. He can spot a grey area from a hundred paces. It's why he's got the job he has. Poacher turned gamekeeper.
Really interesting to learn about a series I know pretty much only through you. Happy to keep on learning!
The Gen5 car, aka The Car Of Tomorrow, had strict rules in place about body modifications. But at the 2008 All-Star Race, the 77 car of former Indycar star Sam Hornish Jr found a workaround by changing the angle of rear axle housing. This gave the car a noticeable yaw, even on the straights. This helped generate side-force, giving the car more grip in the corners, meaning the car could have a loose setup. And as a famous line from Days of Thunder said, “Loose is fast, and on the edge, you’re out of control.”
Yunick's famous side-car Indy Car could have been called the "suicide car" because that's what it surely would have been if anyone tried it in an actual race. It was a side car hooked on to a huge gas tank with wheels. I believe he brought that to Indy in 1964, which, if you know your Indy history, had a genuine suicide car in Mickey Thompson's Sears Allstate Special, which Dave MacDonald optimistically and foolishly agreed to try to race, with disastrous results.
Mario Rossi was crew chief on cars that used nitrous in qualifying.
Also, one of the great NASCAR pseudo-cheating stories is about the 1997 Jeff Gordon T-Rex/Jurassic Park car. The short version: Everything was legal, but it found every grey area and loophole it could. It ended up being the fastest car out there and Gordon won the 1997 The Winston (the All-Star race). Story has it that Bill France told Gordon's crew chief Ray Evernham that the car was illegal. Evernham responded basically saying "No it's not. Everything we did was within the rules." And France replied with "Well, it won't be tomorrow."
The thing about Smokey is he never cheated he modofied the car in areas that weren't in the rule book, as soon as it was illegal he wouldn't run it
You didn't mention the "t-rex" car that Hendrick Motorsports made for one of the all star races in the 90's. Ray Evernham made a car that according to the rules was legal, until after the race when Bill France Jr. said "it wont be legal tomorrow"
Excellent video but it was made hysterical with your Marty Robbins Big Iron rendition complete with English accent. El Paso was his biggest hit in the United States.
I love this!! I grew up watching NASCAR and I enjoy going through the history books behind it. If you’re interested, I recommend looking up Junior Johnson’s “banana car”, a 66 Ford Galaxie that was so disgustingly illegal that it now sits in the HOF as his magnum opus!! The car that made the 66 Ford Galaxie 500 coupe my dream car 😂
Smokey Yunick has gotten coverage on here plenty and rightfully so, but I really feel like Junior Johnson needs his own video. Darrell Waltrip's car for the All Stat race at Charlotte in the 1980s is almost it's own video IMO
The thing with Joe Gibbs Racing and magnet is that they've tuned the engine to be above regulation. The car was going to get inspected on a dynamometer, and The crew CANNOT detuned the engine while in parc fermé condition (or whatever NASCAR call it). The magnet is the best solution they can come up with.
There is a vid floating around where someone who owns the Smokey 66 put it next to a 100 % factory car, the changes are subtle but the cars are the " same " size. Also, one trick common in the day was to droop the nose sheet metal.
NASCAR does take away wins. At the 2022 M&M's Fan Appreciation 400, Denny Hamlin won the race, with then-teammate Kyle Busch finishing second. Both Joe Gibbs Racing cars were disqualified after post-race inspection discovered illegal aerodynamic modifications on the front fascia; as a result, third-place finisher Chase Elliott was declared the race winner. Hamlin became the first NASCAR Cup Series winner to be disqualified since 1960, when Emmanuel Zervakis was stripped of his win at Wilson Speedway for an oversized fuel tank. It was later revealed that the front fascias of Hamlin and Busch's cars had a layer of clear packaging vinyl that was not removed prior to the application of the paint scheme wrap.
There's something hilariously ironic about a guy who had a name that sounds like "eunuch" having some of the biggest balls in the business.
My grandmother lived through the great depression. She saved and reused everything possible, including reusing the same Saran Wrap many, many, many times over. One of her favorite things was feeding family. Food came out of nowhere all the time.
This was great. Smokey didn't invent the rulebook, but he's why it's so thick. You should do an episode on Leonard Wood and Wood Brothers Racing.
This is one of my absolute favorite topics in motorsports and obviously Nascar has the most stories. If you need more there are so many out there.
Nascar for whatever reason would only measure ride height and weight pre race. So teams used to stack wooden shims in the springs so once the suspension loaded up it would crush the wood and the rode height dropped. As hard as the weight teams would used wheels that were 2 or 3 times the weight of a normal wheel. The car would handle like junk for the first run until pit stops rolled around. Magically after putting a new set of wheels on the car was a rocketship. Or teams would have a fake radio box or an entire helmet completely made of lead to weigh the car then swap it on the grid before the start of the race.
Speaking of Junior Johnson his favorite wheight shedding method was to fill the frame rail with lead shot and then drop it through a hidden door in the frame rail. This became so prevalent that the track owner of Martinsville was driving himself carzy trying to figure out how his track was full of little lead balls after the race was over every year.
Smoking was a legend. He found so many loopholes in the rule book... lol. He was to engineering the inside of the car to Adrian Newey is to outside of the car.
I love hearing NASCAR stuff from British TH-camrs, has a different flavor to it especially compared to your regular NASCAR TH-camrs.
Aidan: most excellent video! I like all of your videos but this one was far and above! I love the NASCAR cheating stories. Have watched dozens of them from drivers, crew members, officials, and family on Dale Earnhardt Jr's podcast. Stories of shot falling out of the car onto the track to reduce weight, changeable angle spoilers, and the nitrous oxide for qualifying are some of the best ones I've ever heard. Smokey Yunnick stories are some of the wildest, funniest, and least believable ones you'll ever hear! These people are some of the most creative and clever people I've ever heard of.
I read Smokey's book "The Best Damn Garage in Town" about 20 years ago (when a hurricane relieved me of power for a couple of days) and I highly recommend it. He managed to come home with large coffee cans full of cash to the tune of $125k which he later used to start the garage. He held patents for automotive improvements and was just a really interesting guy overall. I only wish that I'd stopped in the Best Damn Garage in Town once to meet him and shake his hand before he passed.
Keep up the good work! (Also, yes you do pronounce the "K" in "Knaus" LOL, you said his name perfectly, I'd love to see an AI get THAT right!)
Love your videos, keeps me entertained in the perpetual traffic jams coming home from work. Would love to see vids on The Dakar and JGTC/Super GT as well.
Hey Aiden, I really enjoyed this one! Congrats on 101K+ subs btw. Can't wait for more in this vein!
Junior Johnson as an owner, the master of 'Innovation'.
50 wins as a driver, 50 wins as an owner. That's a racing resume! His command of the English language, not so much... but you don't need that to drive fast.
This video made me smile like a great big smiley thing. Got to love the ingenuity and persistence of these guys
More stuff like this please, we’re even willing to forgive the fluffed audio lines for interesting videos like this, nice to see more non F1 videos
Great vid. Very interesting, I didn't know any of this about NASCAR. Oh and Marty Robbins is a legend! Great music.
There was an old saying about Elvis: "Before anyone else did anything, Elvis did everything."
Yeah, that. Smokey Yunick.
I always appreciate when you talk about Nascar!🙏
This was pure genius Aidan!!!
Also, I know it's outside the NASCAR part of the story, but Smokey's legendary Hot Vapor Engine is also worth a look. His reverse rotation engine as well. He was willing to really examine what made things work and why and how you coule affect every part of the car to make it faster.
The awful thing about trying to get into NASCAR is that its rules are too complicated to understand or appreciate the racing styles and strategies. Then, the absurd amount of interruptions in live race coverage drives you away before you can start to enjoy anything. I cannot not the race interruptions, even when it’s PIP. It’s not PIP during race coverage, it’s a little, crappy race view thumbnail during SOME commercials and it’s so distracting they might as well just make it all commercials. Im not going out of my way to get something without the ads before I know that I’ll like it.
I found MotoGP fairly easy to enjoy, even without knowing too much.
Before the Xfinity cars went to composite bodies, I used to install the rear glass so it'd "float" at superspeedways. Basically it'd raise up at speed due to the air pressure inside the car at speed, allowing that air to escape on top of the raised glass deflecting air off of the spoiler.
Still not the most creative thing I've done at superspeedways, though.
There is a great interview driver Darrell Waltrip did with Dale Earnhardt Jr, where Waltrip goes into detail about bending the rules on the track.
Waltrip telling Junior Johnson stories is also worth the time. Some epic cheating in there
Lead shot in the rollbar cage is another good one. There’s so much to look forward to. Denny Hamlin I believe did lose a win and was DQ’d in 2022 or 2023 but I can’t remember what year for modifiers to the bumper on the car
The primary reason NASCAR doesn't DQ winners has to do with Richard Petty's 199th Cup win, using an oversized engine. The Frances were incensed, but they were not going to a) disqualify their most popular driver and b) take away a win that put him one closer to the magical, unobtainable 200 wins number. So, NASCAR used the "the winner on the track is the winner" theory to justify punishing Petty with the loss of points, and the team with lost points, suspensions, and a fine.
Joey Logano's "glovegate" is an example of how, with essentially spec cars, the smallest thing gets blown out of proportion. Notice how thick the webbing is on the side window nets? It's partially because it blocks air from coming into the car, creating drag. But there's a large opening at the front of the net, between it and the windshield pillar, and by a driver sticking their hand in front of it, blocks the air coming in. Logano added fabric strips between the fingers, and the thumb, so that when he put his hand over the hole, and spread his fingers, it covered more of it. NASCAR didn't have a rule about blocking the air with your hand, so they had to improvise and use a rule that states that all safety equipment must be unaltered-including gloves
DIDN'T disallow wins. There is one or two more disputed wins of Petty's. One was, and is to this very day disputed by Bobby Allison that a scoring error gave the 43 a win he should have gotten.
Jeff Gordon ones said something like: If I'd ask my crew chief how tech inspection went, and the answer would be: " All good, Got trough it without a hitch" I knew we would not be winning that race..
And drivers being told; if you win this race, make sure you crash the back end in the victory celebrations
14:36 that was awesome and...please more?
As a fan of Nascar, it’s more of stretching the rules, technically it is somewhat legal. There was an instant recently in Pocono where the first 2 were disqualified and the 3 rd place person was given the win
You should make a video on the 1997 NASCAR All-Star race. The race itself isn't the focus, it's Jeff Gordon's car nicknamed T-Rex, because it was a car worked from the ground up with the distinct purpose of being as deep in the gray area as possible.
You should do a video on dakar and how they moved bc of terrorism and then moved again bc of greenwashing
awesome video. Please could you do a video on the controversies surrounding the 1996 Audi A4 Quartro in BTCC
The Hendricks 24 T-Rex never cheated, only ran one race, and was banned by NASCAR for no real reason. That could be a whole video on it's on for ya
Instead of surfing the net for info can I suggest reading Smokey's 3 volume autobiography "Sex, Lies and Superspeedways" for the real story. Part one, "Crawlin Under a Snakes Belly". Part two, "Alright You Sumbiches Let's Have A Race". Part three, "What Did You Invent Smokey?". Fkn hell of a read.
F1 were freezing their fuel as well, back in the day to get around the fuel bag limits, so now the regs state that the fuel can no longer be more than 10 degrees below ambient temperature when being placed in the car.
It’s kinda funny when ya hear these stories from NASCAR since there’s that whole debate within the fanbase of whether or not the cars were actually stock or not throughout the early stages of NASCAR in the late 40s and through the 50s and 60s. Especially when ya have guys who were moonshine runners during the prohibition era who were trying everything to stay ahead of the cops and then all that transferred over to NASCAR. Guys like Smokey and Johnson and any other driver or team who looked at the rule book and said “yeah it says I can’t do this, but doesn’t say I can’t do this.” I seen something, I think it was a video or article talking about something as simple as brakes where drivers would get brakes used on taxis and police cars cause they were better made than the ones that came stock with whatever vehicle. The rules said the brakes had to be for this make of vehicle, but it didn’t say of which model. I can’t remember how that quote went for that.
Michael Waltrip in the 2007 Daytona 500 qualifying is another ine to look at. He used ulillegal fuel laced with rocket fuel, jet fuel, or another additive and was fined $100,000, his crew cheif banned indefinately, his car seized, and docked 100 points. He is currently the only driver to ever start the year with negetive points.
It was a coating on the intake. No fuel was illegal.
@@ATEC101 It was an oxygenating compound. It smells like Vic's Vapo-Rub. I caught one in ARCA years ago. Could have been Vic's for all I know.
@@DDS029now I’m imagining some poor mechanic with a cough accidentally getting some vapo rub onto the engine and causing one of the biggest scandals in NASCAR history, lol.
Aidan can sing BOTH kinds of music, country and western!
A blues brothers reference was not on my bingo card for today.
Bob's Country Bunker
You hit the nail on the head - bending the rules or finding a loophole is fine but flagrant deception is not. Darrell Waltrip has told the story about having lead bbs in the frame of his car that he released during the race to make his car lighter. Then for post race weigh in, the crew handed a lead hat to Darrell. Or the moveable spoiler on Harry Gant's car that would lay down during the race but would stand up to the proper angle during post race inspection. Harry won 3 races in a row.
Hello Aidan: This gave me a good laugh. Thank you.
Do you plan on touching on McLaren's revolving lineup of Indy drivers and what's going on there? I dabble in Indy and am a long time F1fan that doesn't understand how that type of thing happens.
The Nigels's at Toyota's rally team had the greatest cheat going, even having the engineering praised by the FIA as they disqualified and banned the car.
Bruh. The country singing was on point. Cheers from California. Spot-fucking-on.
Edit: Chad Knaus is definitely a cheater. How many times Kenseth finished top 3 with Johnson winning really ground my gears in my formative years. 🤬 (oh, and yes, the K is pronounced in Knaus.)
And he kept that golden horse shoe up his ass, must have been uncomfortable.
Jimmy Johnson and Chad Knaus were two of the biggest cheaters in NASCAR. I remember one race where Knaus told Jimmy to back the car into the wall if he won. Among many others.
20:28 so it wasn’t add drag, you block the air going across the window net to make a smooth surface for air to flow across for superspeedway qualifying
Fun trick we used to do is there is a hose running to the driver for fresh air that connects to a hole on the Right Rear window, have the driver shove a rag or plug into that hole, the air packs up in the hose and then outside the window, and suddenly your dumping air off the spoiler.
Superspeedway qualifying is where you’ll find the most cheating through the whole field
I'm not big into bike racing either. However! King of the Baggers is fantastic racing. 620 pound hogs getting hammered around track getting extra sketchy.
The 97 T-Rex car was one that NASCAR banned almost immediately. It was 94 Penske levels of utter dominance and it wasn't illegal at the time. THe story goes from a Rainbow Warriors crew member at the time that after the race, Bill France summoned either the crew chief, one of the crew or the crew, sources vary on this, to the hauler and basically said something to the effect of that's a nice car, don't; bring it back here ever again. The thing was, at the time the car wasn't illegal. BUt as soon as Bill France said that, the car was illegal even if nothing in the rulebook said so.
Also the trick spoiler the Skoal Bandit used one year at Daytona. Leo Jackson was tasked to find it, If I'm remebering right it was the motor to make the power trunk on the back of a car go up, and it was just flipped around, hooked up to something or other and then hooked up to the spoiler and the driver could activate it. Leo Jackson was told look, you know there is something illegal on this car. You know it's there. If you can find it, we won't run it. Leo couldn't find it. Nor could the inspectors, the story goes that at the start of his lap, Harry Gant came past with the spoiler flat on the deck lid and the NASCAR official happened to be turned around when Gant went past on his timed laps. Same interview said every car that year was doing something to cheat, from having trick shocks that would be legal at inspection time then once the car got out on track and especially up on the banking, the rubber would fall apart and the car would lower and be quicker due to aero things, and IIRC again, I don't remember if anyone got busted for that but it was appparently, that year at least, so widespread everyone was doing it
EDIT: Can we count the manufacturers working with their cars on superspeedways as rule bending? THe way I have heard it is if you work with another manufacturer's cars you are in serious trouble with your manufacturer, to me that is blatant cheating and race manipulation. One more that gets into conspiracy theory territory is the 2001 Pepsi 400 and that NASCAR allegedly looked the other way if Jr had an illegal car and let him go out there and win, again, conspiracy theory
There are 2 great automobile club videos on TH-cam about loopholes and grey areas, especially with *that* ACO Porsche, and they all Swear to the "Book of Smokey" at the beginning
Maybe culture is just different in Europe. The attitude of if you aint cheating, you aint trying is something praised among all motorsports. We love it here seeing who can bend the rules in their favor, that is until one guy starts dominating 😅
If you haven’t seen the Dinner with Racers episode on Smokey Yunick’s Chevelle, they go and measure the car. They detail as much as they can compared to a similar era Chevelle that Bobby Allison raced. Talk about attention to detail! 😮🤩🤩💥🏁
The France/Kennedy family running NASCAR HATED Smokey Yunick so much it's unlikely he'll ever be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame...he also came up with an earlier version of the softer walls used now and Bill France Sr refused when he found out how expensive it would cost.
Also lawnmower racing, didn't that get into one of the ToCA/regional variants Race Driver games? I swear it was Race Driver 2 or 3 that had actual lawnmowers to race in, the sheer variety of those games with the formats they were on and you got a bit of everything, the original ToCA/regional variants Race Driver even had NASCAR ovals and a late model as well for some off brand NASCAR fun too, including our Rockingham
Some of the people I worked with kept track of how many rules they were responsible for creating.
Spring loaded truck arms would be one example.
Mario Andretti lost the 1981 Indy 500 four months after finishing the race.
Depending who you ask ;) The Cheater and The Wop were great friends.
I like this Smokey Yunich guy.
Reckon we'd have been mates.
I think NASCAR has missed an opportunity. The stretching of the rules that has always occurred was part of the attraction. The US have an entire racing series called "World of Outlaws" after all. They have attempted to sanitize the sport and have, as a result, made it pretty boring.
I think they should allow controlled cheating. Each team would be given [a number] of "cheats" to use throughout the year. They can only use one at a time, and they must be declared to NASCAR (but needn't tell anyone else) before the inspection process begins.
There would be exceptions that they couldn't mess with (restrictor plates at the super speedways, for instance), and there would still be margins in which they fit, but the "cheat" would allow them a measured amount of latitude.
This would add interest as the "cheats" ar announced after the race, and might possibly allow a smaller team to find a neat little trick to snag them a win.
They don't need allowable cheating. They need allowable adjustments. Ranges that things are allowable. Not so much exact measurements that everyone has to run with. Give the crew chiefs adjustments back to try and out-smart the competition.
14:40 who knew Mr Millward could sing country music well!?
darrell waltrip had 1.21m (4ft) of extra fuel lining once (he won the race on fuel go figure, it was the 80s.)
So did many others...