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Originally posted in the NASCAR thread, I think it could do better if asked generally, so here we go.
Going over Daytona, looking at the super speedway races last season, and thinking about how Indycar changed after Dan Wheldon's death at Vegas, I have a question.
Is it possible that auto racing has, for lack of a better term, evolved? The only time raw speed is the only answer in on Bonneville's salt flats, NASCAR started with restrictor plates and has tried everything aside from using Hummers as race cars to slow them down, Indycar was sheduled to change cars, but wheldons death changed some of the rules as well. It just feels that the quest for speed is over, and may have been as early as the mid 90's if you think about it, but only now are we seeing the repurcussions.
The Daytona 500 has become a showpiece, Talladega is a two week party that is disregarded as a anomaly after any crash, and the Indy 500 has not only outlived the use of it's current layout(Why are there three days of qualifying still?) but is a case of two factors, can you slingshot past and will the tires hold, because they can still run the circuit full throttle at times.
After thinking a few days longer, You can point at the new F1 cars, and the dismissal of Group B rallying as extensions of this. The more I think about it, and the more I research, I find more evidence of fighting back against speed from the governing bodies. Drag racing may be one of the few left, but with the NHRA going from 1/4-mile races to 1000m runs after Scott Kallitta's crash, even they have take precautions.
Am I the only one on this?
Going over Daytona, looking at the super speedway races last season, and thinking about how Indycar changed after Dan Wheldon's death at Vegas, I have a question.
Is it possible that auto racing has, for lack of a better term, evolved? The only time raw speed is the only answer in on Bonneville's salt flats, NASCAR started with restrictor plates and has tried everything aside from using Hummers as race cars to slow them down, Indycar was sheduled to change cars, but wheldons death changed some of the rules as well. It just feels that the quest for speed is over, and may have been as early as the mid 90's if you think about it, but only now are we seeing the repurcussions.
The Daytona 500 has become a showpiece, Talladega is a two week party that is disregarded as a anomaly after any crash, and the Indy 500 has not only outlived the use of it's current layout(Why are there three days of qualifying still?) but is a case of two factors, can you slingshot past and will the tires hold, because they can still run the circuit full throttle at times.
After thinking a few days longer, You can point at the new F1 cars, and the dismissal of Group B rallying as extensions of this. The more I think about it, and the more I research, I find more evidence of fighting back against speed from the governing bodies. Drag racing may be one of the few left, but with the NHRA going from 1/4-mile races to 1000m runs after Scott Kallitta's crash, even they have take precautions.
Am I the only one on this?
