IS IT THE CAR OR THE DRIVER? BY PACK BRYAN It s an age-old question: Does a good car win races, or does it take a great driver? Are other factors involved as well? We may not settle the debate, but we will provide some persuasive arguments, representing several points of view. Jimmy Johnson scores an unprecedented fourth consecutive win with the 2009 Sprint Cup Championship, and two of his three Hendrick Motorsports teammates Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon finish the season second and third behind him. Definitely three good drivers... in three good cars! Which do you think was more important? No matter how you answer, I ll say it was the other. It s a wonderful argument car or driver as old as racing itself. But are there other important factors that come into play? Hendrick s cars were virtually identical; Johnson and Gordon are former champions, and Mark Martin is a perennial front-runner; and they re all members of a dominant racing organization. A look at the recent 1-2-3 Sprint Cup Championship finish and at the records suggests that Hendrick s team approach is the way to go. His teams have won more NASCAR events than any other in stock car racing. The latest count is 188. Their success displays the advantages of multiple-vehicle teams. When crew chiefs put their heads together and share experiences, setup, handling and speed secrets start flowing. Sometimes it takes time for new crew chiefs to get up to speed, but when they do, the results can be very impressive. Out at the track, nine- and ten-second pit stops require precision and strength, so the better teams also have wellequipped gymnasiums in their shops, and pit crew personnel spend several hours a day practicing pit assignments and working out with weights. Then there s attitude. Success breeds success, and there is no greater moralebuilder than being on a winning team. The enthusiasm is contagious, and their mutual experiences and easy communication develop a bond that pays off every time. As Hendrick himself puts it, It s all about the people the team and driver. Montage: Harold A. Perry; images: Wieck Media 18 March 2010
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IS IT THE CAR OR THE DRIVER? Birth of a legend. Because his rear-engine racer was not ready, A.J. Foyt put pavement tires on his dirt car and put it on the pole for a 200-mile race at the Milwaukee Mile in 1965. He finished second, beating many newer cars. If you assemble a group that s willing to work together, everything else will take care of itself. The cars are so close and the rules are so tight that it almost always comes down to the human capital. Yes, the cars are so close. NASCAR s much-heralded Car of Tomorrow has proved itself to the satisfaction of the sanctioning body, although some drivers still have their reservations. For the 2010 season, there ll be two changes; sometime in March the rear wing will be replaced with a spoiler and the four orifices on the carburetor restrictor plate will be enlarged to 63 64ths for the Daytona and Talladega races this year. According to Aussie driver Marcos Ambrose, the Cup cars have nowhere enough downforce, way too much power and not enough tire grip. If the car is comfortable, you re too slow. An experienced driver who s won championships in Europe and Australia, Ambrose is a NASCAR regular, having successfully raced for a year in trucks, two in Nationwide and now in the Sprint Cup series. Ambrose goes on to say that Cup racing is possibly the only motorsports left in the world where drivers make the big difference, because the cars just don t handle. Hendrick asks, Who is willing to outwork the competition? What team has the best communication? Who has the best chemistry? When all those things work together, you ll be successful. It sounds easy, but that combination is hard to find. The fourth Hendrick driver, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., NASCAR s most popular driver for the seventh straight year in 2009, finished a disappointing 25th in the Cup standings. The whole Hendrick operation spent the winter doing the teamwork bit, working with him to bring his driving and his car up to their standards. The results? Earnhardt shared the front row for the 2010 Daytona 500 with teammate Mark Martin. Earnhardt finished second in the race and Martin, who sat on the pole, was twelfth. Ray Evernham, now an ESPN analyst for NASCAR, agrees about finding the right combination. He was crew chief for Jeff Gordon on the Hendrick team from 1993 to 1999. This was during Gordon s early climb to sixth on the list of all-time great NASCAR drivers 47 Cup wins and three championships. Gordon now has 82 Cup victories to his credit. Evernham is very familiar with the crucial chemistry between driver and crew chief, the ability to communicate totally with each other. As he puts it, in the years since they ve gone in different directions, neither Gordon nor Evernham has had the success they achieved together. Chris Economaki, the dean of motorsports journalism, offered some thoughts. Photo: Russ Lake A happy Kendrick team faces the press (l. to r.): Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jimmie Johnson and owner Ray Hendrick. Martin and Earnhardt sat on the front row for the 2010 Daytona 500. Earnhardt finished second. After leading the 1912 500 from the third lap, Ralph DePalma and his riding mechanic pushed their car the full 2 1 2 miles of the 199th lap but couldn t make it for the last lap. Photo courtesy Indianapolis Motor Speedway 20 March 2010
IS IT THE CAR OR THE DRIVER? For many years there was no question it was the driver, but with the technology that s been brought into the sport lately, that s changed somewhat. With the infinite adjustability of the equipment, the car becomes more of a factor in a winning combination than it was in the past. In recent seasons, he added, really, More than 50 certification tests in 12 specialties. ASE provides: Up-to-date, industry-recognized tests A visible symbol of competence Better job opportunities and earnings An evaluation tool for new hires A gauge for on-the-job performance Consumer marketing opportunities the car s importance has increased tremendously. That infinite adjustability of the car also, unfortunately, allows you to set it up wrong if you don t know what you re doing. Not too many teams are up on that, yet. Successful team leader Chip Ganassi says that if you have good equipment, Register for May tests at www.ase.com. Taking ASE Tests this Spring? Register by March 31. you ll attract good driv ers. His record of three Indy 500 wins, three 24 Hours of Daytona wins and several NASCAR wins backs up that statement. And his driver Juan Pablo Montoya seems to have been the only Indy 500 winner so far to have any real success in NASCAR since Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt in the 60s. Montoya finished tenth in the 2010 Daytona 500. For another look at the car or driver question, let s go back to the two Offenhauser-powered front-drive machines built and entered in the Indy 500 by Lou Moore from 1947 through 1950, several years before the team approach became popular. For three years in a row, one of the two cars won the race. Bill Holland was leading in 47, when Moore cautioned him to go easy. Teammate Mauri Rose zipped past him and they finished one-two. The next year, they finished in the same order. Finally, in 1949, Holland won the race. In 1950, Rose moved to another team and Holland finished second again in the same Offy-powered car. Not bad three seconds and a first in four races. Where did the arguments about car vs. driver first start? Evidence says that with first-rate cars, any good driver could be successful. But what happens with an outclassed car? The car might be obsolete, underpowered, ill-fitted for the track or just not in condition to go racing. Three examples from the early, middle and modern eras of racing add fuel to the fire of enthusiasm for the drivers. My favorite is Ralph DePalma, who raced from the early teens in the last century to the mid- 30s. He compiled a record of 2557 wins in the 2889 races he entered! One example from the Vanderbilt Cup race in Santa Monica in 1914: Driv ing a much slower Mercedes, De- Palma beat the great Barney Oldfield in a Mercer in what he considered his finest race. He went on to win the Indianapolis 500 in 1915. Although he finished 11th in the 1912 Indy 500, DePalma that year earned a place in the hearts of race fans that lasted forever. Getting to the front on the third lap, he led the race until the 197th, when he broke a connecting rod. He and his riding mechanic then got out 22 March 2010
and tried to push the car for the last two laps, but fell exhausted after one. A single example of Italian driver Tazio Nuvolari s record shows why many considered him to be the greatest race car driver in the world during the 1930s and for many years thereafter. When Nuvolari charged his obsolete and outclassed Alfa Romeo past Germany s favored Auto Unions and Mercedes to win the 1935 Grand Prix race at the Nurburgring, for example, he set the stage for years of unending bench racing on the subject of driver vs. car. In the modern era, A.J. Foyt started a legend about his invincibility at the Milwaukee Mile in 1965. Foyt put his Offenhauser-powered dirt car, a traditional, hightailed American racing machine, on the pole for a 200-mile race at Milwaukee against a field of pavement racing roadsters and rear-engine cars one or two generations younger. The rear-engine car Foyt had planned to run at Milwaukee was not ready to race, so he put pavement tires on the dirt car and finished second. Some said he d have won if he hadn t had to stop several times for fresh tires. Others responded by saying that if he hadn t basically driven the tires off the car, he wouldn t have finished nearly as well. So which is it? Colorful auto writer Brock Yates answered that It s not the car or driver, it s the car and driver, although his answer may have been influenced by his employer at the time the magazine of that name. I talked with Corinne Economaki, who has succeeded her father, Chris, as the editor and publisher of the racing bible National Speed Sport News, about IROC, where the hopefully identical cars were expected to provide a once-and-for-all measure of the driving abilities of chauffeurs from all the major series IndyCars, NASCAR, road racing, World of Outlaws and even drag racing occasionally. After 30 years, the series ended in 2006. It was never a big draw among fans, but NASCAR s perennial finish-upfront Mark Martin was the winner of five championships and a total of 13 races. Given identical equipment, Martin s superior driving ability stood out. It was like that during the post-world War II Midget era when hundreds of Offy- or flathead Ford 60-powered Kurtis-Kraft Midgets gave many future stars the opportunity and almost nightly experience needed to move up the ladder in racing. Most of the Indy winners of the 50s and 60s got their starts in the Circle #19 Circle #17 Midgets. When everyone was driving virtually the same car, it gave the driver a better chance to shine. Moving over to the Big Cars, as the Indy racing machines were called, the same conditions applied. Once again, Kurtis-Kraft and, later, Watson cars all powered by the reliable old four-cylinder Circle #16 Circle #18 March 2010 23
IS IT THE CAR OR THE DRIVER? DOHC Offenhauser predominated, with the same results. From 1949 until 1962, the good old Offy powered at least 31 of the 33 starting cars in every 500. Mechanic A.J. Watson designed and built a new roadster for car owner John Zink in 1956. First time out, driver Pat Flaherty put the car on the pole and won the race. For five of the next six races, a Watson car won and four Watsons finished second. At an auto show dinner in the late 50s, I was teased by a table full of GM PR types, throwing out the challenge that the cars in the Indy 500 were all the same: What kind of a race was that? I was defended by the late John Cutter, Chevy s PR chief, who asked, They re all hitting the same ball at Yankee Stadium, aren t they? Sam Hanks and Jimmy Bryan scored consecutive victories in the 1957 and 58 Indy 500s, driving the Belond Special with a horizontally mounted Offenhauser engine, designed and built by George Salih. The drivers had distinctly different driving styles and were different enough in size that the car had to be rebuilt after its first victory to accommodate Jimmy Bryan s additional bulk for the next year s race. But the car took both in stride. Driver? Car? Driver Johnny Parsons, Jr., is the son of 1950 Indy winner Johnnie Parsons and half brother of Pancho Carter, son 24 March 2010 of another Indy racer, Duane Carter. Parsons, Jr., was a Midget and Sprint Car champion and drove in the Indianapolis 500 12 times, finishing fifth in 1977 and 1985. He speaks for himself and includes a reference to 1983 Indy 500 winner Tom Sneva: When you get to the top levels of racing, when you get that many talented guys together, it s more the equipment than the driver, he says. We always feel that if we were in Rutherford s or Johncock s car, we could have won the race. You need a certain kind of confidence, Mauri Rose, the 1947-48 Indy 500 winner, had a car identical to that of Bill Holland, who placed second both years but won in 1949. Note Rose s short-sleeve shirt, and the size of the steering wheel. No roll bar, firesuit or shoulder harness. Pit stop, 1947-48 style. The eventual winner had enough time to stand by and casually chat with the pit crew while drinking a cup of water. but when you get to that level, most of the top guys have it. It sometimes comes across as arrogance, but it s mostly confidence. At that top level, I d say it was 90% the car. I mentioned that during a chat with Sneva and he corrected me. Nope, it s ninety-five percent the car. he said. I couldn t argue. Mark W. Campbell, Manager, New Product Development for MW Industries in Logansport, IN, says it s about 50% the driver and 50% the car. Quite frankly, I hate seeing that going away, but that s what s happening with crate engines and crate cars. Listening to him, you realize that he s been around racing a long, long time. Sanctioning bodies like NASCAR and the IRL are dictating how everything has to be, he said. What made racing great was that you had relatively few rules, and there was innovation on the part of the chassis builder, innovation by the engine builder. You looked for the gray areas in the rules and you took advantage of those gray areas. NASCAR grew because of the image of people like Smokey Yunick. When he was at his peak, the term cheater in racing was a great compliment because he was an innovator and was thinking around the rules. He never broke the rules ( got caught might be a better way to describe it), but he played between the continued on page 49 Photos courtesy Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Photos: Pack Bryan IS IT THE CAR OR THE DRIVER? continued from page 24 lines and then they rewrote the rule book to cover what he d done. Then they said it was illegal, Campbell said. We ve lost the local speed shop and the local engine builder, and without them, there is no one to mentor the racer. The young person entering racing today won t have anyone to show him what to do. If we want innovation in the industry, we ve got to free it up. Write some generalized rules and realize that what made racing grow was the driver, the chassis builder, the engine builder and the crew chief who put it all together. Let s get going on that, Campbell concluded. Mimicking Yunick in what is now the IRL, Andy Granatelli stretched the rules for his turbine-powered cars in 1966 and 67 (which triggered some rapid rule changes), and Roger Penske did the same with a pushrod engine in 1994. More rule changes followed. Howden Ganley of Premier Fuel Systems, Ltd., in Derby, England, who has spent many years on the Formula One circuit, claims that It s more the car than the driver. In Formula One, for example, there are many two-car teams almost like Noah s Ark. They go two-bytwo, which, to me, shows it s the car. Two McClarens, two Williamses, two Ferraris, two Renaults, etc. It shows that Jimmy Bryan, the 1958 Indy 500 winner, sits in the Belond car, whose Offenhauser engine lay on its side. Sam Hanks won the previous 500 in the same car. Car or driver? The 1956 Indy 500 winner Pat Flaherty sits in the first A.J. Watson car, a design that would win another five Indy 500s before the Lotus Fords changed IndyCar racing. the car is the greater factor. You can t overcome a dog of a car. Look at Lewis Hamilton, F1 World Champion in 2008. His new car for 2009 was very difficult to drive, and he scored nothing. The difference was the car. Formula One has become the race of engineers two men have dominated the field for the last 15 years. Which brings us back to the cars, Ganley concluded. A bystander chipped in: The human always comes first. You can t win without a brain. The driver s has to come first, with the equipment to follow and it better do what he wants, he said before disappearing into the crowd. Once the shield goes down and the switch goes on, it s all in the hands of the driver! So says Rollie Helmling, a former car owner and five-year president of USAC, and now Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels Director of Automotive and Motorsports Initiatives: Being a car owner, I d like to say it s the car, but with top performance so easily available, it s a pretty level playing field. As far as being able to acquire the equipment and the technology, everyone can do that, so I think, really, it s the driver. You gotta have a good car! That s the sentiment from most drivers. The days when DePalma or Nuvolari or even Foyt could jump into any car and win a race are long gone. Stamina rather than brute strength is the principal physical requirement today, and the ability to give total concentration to what you re doing on the track for hours at a time is another way of separating the adults from the children. A vote for the car. With all that goes on preparing a car for the race and then managing its performance during a race, you ve got to have a smooth-running group of dedicated professionals at tire changing, refueling, midrace chassis adjustments and a strong leader. A vote for the team. Finally, what about a vote for luck? Sometimes you can make you own, other times you can t. There s a bittersweet comment that used to be heard during the latter parts of Mario Andretti s 500- mile race career: The most famous words in racing: Mario s slowing down! Andretti s and Foyt s places in racing s record books are virtually side by side. Yet, in 35 entries, Foyt won the Indy 500 four times; in 29 tries, Andretti won once. And in NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., won 49 races on the Daytona track, and yet won the 500 only once, and that under the yellow. Racing luck. Keep all this in mind the next time you join the fray about driver vs. car vs. team. This article can be found online at www.motormagazine.com. March 2010 49