Feb
14
Much Ado About Cheating
February 14, 2007 | Posted by VroomDude
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Unlike VroomChick, I’d be shocked if any of the major teams didn’t knowingly at least bend the rules, each and every racing week. Put a bunch of competitive people around a race car, give them lots of tools and dollars to spend, add in the element of prize money and job security, and you end up with a perfect recipe for all sorts of creative applications of assorted rules and regulations.
In its current incarnation, NASCAR teams are always going to cheat. Guaranteed. Even if you throw a driver out for the race. The only real way to stamp it out would be to impound the car for the race and not allow the team to field a replacement. And that’s never going to happen, for all sorts of reasons.
If you really want to address the cheating issue, you’re going to have to put a lot of the stock back in stock car racing. The Car of Tomorrow is a tiny step in that direction, but if you let teams take cars back to the garage and tweak and fiddle with them, there’s going to be some creative fiddling.
Short of implementing an IROC-esque solution where a single neutral crew is responsible for setting up and maintaining stock cars that drivers climb into each race (and that’s never going to happen, for both logistical and financial reasons), you’re always going to have some cheating.
So the question I end up asking myself is not so much what needs to be done to completely and utterly eradicate all cheating (as my answer is nothing other than what’s being done now, as far as dropping the hammer on teams caught cheating), but whether or not its detrimental to the action on the track, or to the enjoyment of fans.
I’m likely contrary by nature (okay, I confess, I am indeed contrary by nature) but for me the element of cheating almost adds an extra element of interest and excitement. All the teams are composed of big boys and girls, and if they want to gamble with some creative alterations to their car that they think they can sneak through, I’m all for it, as long as they take their punishment like a man or woman if they get caught.
Don’t get me wrong, I think NASCAR needs to be as vigilant as possible and inspect the crap out of cars, each and every week. I’m not at all saying that NASCAR should do the wink-wink-nudge-nudge thing, and turn a blind eye to cheating. I just can’t see it as the horrible black mark on the sport that some seem to be implying of late, or the tone that’s creeping into official statements from FranceCar about the serious implications of being caught cheating, zero tolerance policies, yada yada yada.
NASCAR seems far too focused of late on making the sport as bland and vanilla as possible, so as to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible and to keep ratings and revenue propped up. Which is fine and dandy, but too much of that can be a bad thing, especially when dealing with a sport that largely grew out of bootleggers driving around in fast cars.
Or, more simply, don’t forget who brung you to the dance, FranceCar.