http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/vintage-speed/top-nascar-engineering-cheats Good stuff from Smokey... and then there is Waltrip... More "cheats" at link.
good stuff! on a ferrari related note, yesterday morning at starbux michael waltrip gets in line looking like the typical scrub that he is but this time...he is wearing a ferrari ball cap. i came very close to asking him to get a toyota hat on instead as he was giving ferrari a bad name
Surely the best one was the complete 90 % scale replica cars that were made in the sixties and led to the them having to have a full size cut-out template as part of the scrutineering process - or was that a myth ?
I had the pleasure, in my college days at the U of Florida to get a personal guided tour of the NASCAR garages with Mr. Bill Gazaway (hope I spelled it right) who was the NASCAR technical director back in the early 70's. As we were going thru the inspection area one fellow student pointed out the body templates on the wall and made a comment about "catching the cheaters". Mr Gazaway took umbrage with the comment and explained that everybody wasn't "cheating" but that most teams were just trying "get competitive" and that his job was to make sure that the rules were upheld and that nobody took advantage of the rules. But one other point he made was very interesting. He said, and I will remember this to my dying day, because it is true in racing as it is in all of life.... "The teams that want to win bad enough will still win. They will work harder and find ways to go faster and they will prevail. If I held a wheelbarrow race with one person in the wheelbarrow that ran for the length of the pits, and invited all these teams, the same teams that win at the track would win that race." He said, "They'd get the lightest teammember to sit in the wheelbarrow, they'd take the bearings apart and put in lighweight lube, They'd pump the tire as hard as it would hold together, and they'd find the biggest and strongest guy to wheel their teammate the length of the pits. The would win because they want to win and work hard enough to win." While there have been incidents where cheating was rampant, NASCAR probably does a better job of regining it in that we currently see in F1. Look at how close the racing is in NASCAR and tell me that there could be rampant cheating going on. Now if somebody finds a loophole in the rules or finds an engineering advantage, then go for it, but with the knowledge that is out there today, that's pretty rare.
In racing the greatest cheats don' t get caught. The losers got caught. Don't even want to talk about the stuff we did in the AMA and what we saw others do. An example: In Supersport, where the motors were supposed to be almost stock, the Yosh bikes had a different sound than the other Suzukis. Our did too. We placed a few times, and the AMA never found anything at the tear down. Same with the Yosh bikes. Seems that someone had milled the cases and then line bored everything so the parts fit. Raised the compression about a half a point. Not a lot, but when everyone is legal, an extra 5, 6 HP can make the difference. We might have done the same thing, and nobody got caught. I'm sure in NASCAR with a lot more money,they did far more subtle things. Art
Former Darrell Waltrip crew chief was infamous for cheating. He could have been the one that came up with the bb-ballast idea. Mercury or quicksilver in frame rails was also used at one time. Helped the car "turn-in." He also used a lead (the metal) car radio that was substituted for the real radio after the race to help an illegal, underweight car to weigh-in above the minimum weight. He was so proficient at cheating that NASCAR decided to hire him to spot other infractions. But no one could top Smokey Yunick. He was famous for lighter, 7/8-scale race cars and one car that he hopped-in and drove off AFTER NASCAR seized and removed the gas tank! Looks like Chad Knaus will join Smokey and Gary Nelson as the best cheater of their respective eras. KevFla Orlando
Hendrick motorsports as a whole seems to have cheating/"bending" the rules as part of its ethos. may have something to do with its convicted-felon founder?
Junior Johnson's 1966 Ford Galaxy "Yellow Banana" certainly 'bent' the rules. The car was built by Junior for Fred Lorenzen. The body was cut into 3 sections and then after some not so subtle alterations was put back together. This was the year Ford teams were boycotting NASCAR so the modified car still passed tech to help fill the field for the race. The roof was so low above the door that Fred had to climb into the car using the small side window beside where the back seat once resided... CH
Pretty sure that's the same team that used to have a lead-filled helmet sitting in the car for tech inspection that was switched later for the actual driver's helmet. It's too long ago for me to remember the details but when I was in road racing the corner workers started finding some odd metal rod-like things at the end of races. The tech crew eventually figured out that they were used to dial up the boost during the race and then removed and discarded on the cool-down lap. There were also stories about odd electrical features controlled by the standard car radio in certain showroom stock classes.
Smokey's # 13 Chevelle, Curtiss Turner, did what no one else could do. When Curtiss lost control at Atlanta in practice, the racing world was in awe and what a flat bottomed race looked like. Even F1 engineers did not have the knowledge. Smokey, and Jim Hall, were both way ahead of anyone in F1 in those days. Too bad the powers that be outlawed their progress, US racing would now make everything else look amatuer. Did Smokey cheat? Hmmmmmmmmmm not so sure, but he sure did know the meaning of reading between the lines.
Gary Nelson, Bobby Allison's team leader, decided that the interior of roll bars would be a great place for additional fuel. Probably why NASCAR hired him as their chief tech inspector.
Back in the late 60's the winner in a Trans-Am race ran out of fuel on the cool down lap , and oddly enough nobody thought about the fact it took TWO guys to carry it out to dump in the car , shoulda just needed a couple gallons!
And there was also the Pro Stock drag racer who had a nitrous bottle inside a hollowed area in his fuel tank with the nitrous line running inside an oversize fuel line so it could not be seen by NHRA officials. Worked for over a year and he was very successful................Banned........
Smoky was very careful not to have another Chevelle line up next to his in the pits or tech line. The "slight" difference in size was much more apparent that way.
One of Yunick's "Mystery" Chevelles for sale here: http://www.canepacollection.com/detail-1967-chevrolet-smokey_yunick-nascar_chevelle-used-5117058.html With interesting prep details... some contrary to what's been thought about the car's being scaled down... Great looking car! Best, Tom Image Unavailable, Please Login
."If you don't cheat," he said, "you look like an idiot.". Toyota was caught in the 90s in pro-rally using an air restrictor that would bypass additional air once the hose was clamped over it. Quiet ingenious! http://homepage.virgin.net/shalco.com/tte_ban.htm
Smokey figured out aerodynamics before most everyone else. Notice how the bumpers are flush up against the body. See the windshield slant, the nose positioning, etc. I would think this car is a recreation? Curtiss Turner destroyed the original in practice at AIR.
If we're talking about cheats in other venues, then Honda in the open wheel (cart) class seemed to have the highest horsepower. When Toyota came into the series, they hired the chief Honda mechanic, who looked at their engine, and said: what idiots, if you set up the pop-off valve in a low pressure area, you can get 100 more hp. They snitched Honda out, and from then on the Hondas didn't have a HP advantage. Art
Sorry, but I don't see that as cheating. The governing body said you have to use their popoff valve. They didn't say where it had to be mounted. Just because Honda chose to mount the valve where the internal flow was high (and the pressure was low) doesn't make them a cheater. That's just sharp engineering, and if the rule makers weren't getting the right effect then they needed to adjust the rule to specify a mounting point. Same with a lot of Smokey's innovations. He puttied up the bottom of the car to make it more aerodynamic. That's not cheating unless there is a specific rule against it. Smokey operated on the simple theory "if the rules don't prohibit it, I can do it". Unfortunately that gets a bad rap because others say that's cheating. That's just, as Mr Gazaway said, "getting competitive" and I don't have a problem with it. If you use sound engineering principles to find more speed and the rules don't prohibit what you are doing, it isn't cheating. Way back when somebody brazed a washer into the outlet tube of the pop off valve of their Indy car. Even though the pop off valve had opened, the amount of air leaving the valve was limited by the restriction in the tube and the boost went up. Now, that's cheating.
Having participated in Historic Racing for years now and having once collided with Vic Edelbrock in the Yunick Camaro Trans AM car... we got a cool education in all the things that were done to the 7/8ths Camaro. This was "cheat'n" at a whole 'nuther level. One of the old crew chiefs told us of the crap they'd pull to get the car off the starting grid and start from the pit lane so they didn't have to park this "smaller" car next to the real Camaros (Penske Sunoco). Vic no longer drives the car, one of his girls does now. http://flickriver.com/photos/jimculp/2390168317/ http://www.trans-amseries.com/Drivers/ChristiEdelbrock.htm Rick
The first appearance of Vic Edelbrocks "Smokey Camaro" at Monterey Historics featured rain gutters. Anybody who knows anything about the history of the real car knows the rain gutters were shaved off long ago. I'm just sayin'.......
